Daniel D Chiras - The new ecological home : the complete guide to green building options

S helter is one of the most basic of all human needs, rivaling water, food, and clothing. It safeguards us from foul weather and shields us from sweltering heat and oppressive humidity.Without it, human survival in the diverse and sometimes harsh climates we inhabit would be difficult, if not impossible.

But shelter offers more than protection. It serves as the nucleus of our family life. It is here that we and our loved ones share our lives, grow, and celebrate lifes victories and mourn intermittent defeats. Although not always a respite from the hectic pace of modern life, our homes can provide peace, solitude, and a place for reflection and quiet contemplation.

Shelter is also a financial investment that can reap huge economic rewards. And in many countries, providing shelter is big businessvery big business. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of the Census, newly built single-family homes, duplexes, condos, townhouses, and apartments constructed in 2002 were worth an estimated $389 billion! Hundreds of thousands of jobs, from forest managers, lumberjacks, and truck drivers to framers, carpet installers, and painters, are created by the massive homebuilding industry.

However, shelter, like many other elements of human existence, comes at an extraordinary cost to the planet and its inhabitants. For example, construction of the 1.2 million new homes annually in the United States results in a massive drain on the Earths natural resource base. Consider our forest-lands. In the United States, 85 percent of all new homes are framed with wood.Wood is used elsewhere in construction, too, for instance, to manufacture exterior sheathing, doors, and floors.Today, nearly 60 percent of all timber cut in the United States is used to build houses (Figure 0-1 a & b).

According to the National Association of Home Builders, a typical 2,200square-foot home requires 13,000 board feet of framing lumber:two by fours, two by sixes, and larger dimensional lumber. If laid end to end, the framing lumber required to build an average-sized new home would stretch two and a half miles. If all the dimensional lumber used to build these 1.2 million new homes constructed in the United States each year were laid end to end, it would extend 3 million milesto the moon and back six and a half times.

Many other countries also rely heavily on forests for wood. Humankinds massive demand for timber results in extensive tree cutting. In many regions, timber harvesting is carried out with little concern for the environment. Trees are clear-cut and the land is laid bare, often on an enormous scale. Massive deforestation, in turn, results in a long string of environmental problems: soil erosion, sediment pollution in nearby streams, loss of wildlife habitat, and species extinction (see ).