dagblog - Comments for "Dig We Must"

Thank you so much for the

wws — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 18:12:55 +0000

In reply to I remember reading clipped

Thank you so much for the topic, OxyMora, and for this specific link, Donal, to Your Engineered House. I'd completely forgotten about it as the copy I had (that was actually my father's) was lost in a hurricane. Some humor there, eh? In that, if Robert's principles of siting had been followed in the construction of the house I was living in, the house might have survived. Very pleased to see that it is available online.

Thanks, Donal, that's a great

Oxy Mora — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 12:47:35 +0000

In reply to I remember reading clipped

Thanks, Donal, that's a great reference.

I remember reading clipped

Donal — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 22:32:02 +0000

In reply to Donal, digging with ordinary

I remember reading clipped articles about this guy, Rex Roberts, when I was first getting started. I hadn't thought of him in years, but people used to rave about his practical approach towards small houses. His book, Your Engineered House, is online for any of us to read.

Donal, digging with ordinary

Oxy Mora — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 21:04:55 +0000

In reply to Dig We Must

Donal, digging with ordinary shovels is at the heart of the problem.

This past year I built several cottages on country property. I have some design experience and I hired some local guys to do the building. Materials were bought at local hardware and lumber stores. When we through building a couple of the guys were scratching their heads. "How much all this cost ya?" The fact was that a conventionally built very small house was a lot less expensive than the very same sized "manufactured houses" the guys lived in. And they were underwater, having been ripped off on the quality of what they bought and the extremely high interest rates. I should disclose that them liberals havn't yet screwed up everything with pesky zoning laws, so that helped a lot.

I don't mention this example to put these guys down. In fact, their self reliance and specific carpentry experience and such was essential to the result. We made a good team. Nevertheless my point is that people have surrended their common sense to a culture of buy it off the shelf, sign the papers, move in, get it now, all tied to the ultimate power of advertising of corporations and the associated mark-up on interest rates for those who can least afford it. Unassociated thinking about how things might be done otherwise fits right into the detachment of what kind of toxicity lies inside a plastic house or how thin a repaired pot hole is or how a rusty bridge is falling apart under a coat of paint which has been slapped on top of it.

So I think a lot of problem with infrastructure is that people don't think about it until it actually collapses. Then my concern is that a great many people wouldn't know which end of the shovel is the handle if they had to use one. But in my county, or course, word is spreading like wild fire on how to build a small house starting from scratch with local materials.

This.

tmccarthy0 — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 19:39:52 +0000

In reply to My first impulse is to blame

This.

My first impulse is to blame

Michael Maiello — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 19:26:46 +0000

In reply to Dig We Must

My first impulse is to blame this on the existence of our mostly functional legacy systems. Certainly when you decide to build, say, a city out of nothing in Dubai you can make better choices based on what's available now. But that doesn't explain Europe at all. In Berlin in 2000 you could make a cell phone call on the subway. You still can't do that in New York today and it's not because the technology would be hard to implement, the plans have been around for years (and they're actually doing something about it now).

Our politics are part of the problem. Look at our response to Katrina, not just the disaster but the aftermath. Instead of taking the opportunity to thoroughly rebuild and modernize one of our great port cities and a cultural mecca we had a giant argument about why people in Connecticut should be expected to pay to help people who were so stupid as to live in a hurricane zone. Same argument happens whenever California forest fires rage out of control or an earthquake hits. Once upon a time we were willing, as a nation, to fund bringing electric power to vast swaths of the heartland. We did this partly to fuel our own war machine but also out of a sense of national pride. Universal electrical access. I wouldn't even bother asking a heartland taxpayer today if they'd be willing to help fund an expansion of the NYC subway system.