Abundant Edge Podcast Interview

Transcription of interview:

Interviewer: Hey, Daniel, thanks so much for making time to be with me today. How you doing?
Daniel: Oh, I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me.
Interviewer: Hey, it's my pleasure. I appreciate you reaching out. And I'm really excited to talk to you today about Aircrete. So, what do you say we just jump right in?
Daniel: Oh, absolutely. So. I guess I'll start with what Aircrete is right?
Interviewer: Sure. Actually, before we do that, if you could give us a little about your personal background and what interested you in construction to begin with and what got you interested in Aircrete eventually?
Daniel: Okay, well, I've kind of grew up around construction most of my life and in one foam or another. I've been involved in construction for over 30 years. And Aircrete is something that just kind of surface as an alternative building method when I was you know... I've built everything rammed earth. I've packed cob, I've done waddled in dog, and for a situation coming up in my life, it just happens to be that was like super convenient answer that one person can take out into the middle of absolutely nowhere and slap together.
Interviewer: Okay, so, like we were doing before, let's start by talking about what it is and how it differs from what people already know about concrete itself?
Daniel: Aircrete is not cement. Aircrete is just Portland, technically cement is the combination of Portland cement and sand and gravel. But the difference with Aircrete is that we entrain air into the actual Portland cement, we inflate it six times its normal volume. And this creates an insulating structural product. So, it's both structure and insulation. It's not as strong as cement, but it's compressively, it's just as strong as the two by four wall or any thickness of wall on 24 centers.
Interviewer: That's pretty much looks like a rigid foam held together with the same cement that would make up concrete but without the heavy added material of sand and gravel.
Daniel: Exactly, and a lot of air which makes it light.
Interviewer: Sure. Alright, so walk me through the process. What kind of equipment do you need? And how long does it take to make a mix like this? What are the different ingredients?





Daniel: All right, well, the primary ingredient of course, is just a bag of Portland cement, and water. Typically, you'll add about five gallons of water to an entire bag of Portland cement. And then you'll do this you know; I like to have a barrel with a pivot on it so I can eliminate in lifting when at all possible. And you just use an eight amp or stronger drill and a good three blades flat spiral mixer and you turn your foam on and the foam is you know it can be a soap bubbles but honestly some kind of Filming agents like Drexel for foam is a lot stronger, works better. And so you have another five gallons of water that is a dilution of your foaming agents and water and you turn on a pump and you pump this into the bottom of your mixing container, and you run your drill until it has an inflated itself to a mark on your mixing container that equals about six cubic feet.
Interviewer: Wow, okay, and this is all contained in what size of a bucket they doing this?
Daniel: Well for a single 92-pound bag of Portland cement will use a 50-gallon drum and a 30-inch mixing blade which works out to just about six cubic feet by the time the cement gets into the drill.
Interviewer: And what kind of chemicals are the foaming agents made up of? Are there different options or like the one you mentioned that was ideal? Is that that really what you recommend?
Daniel: Yeah, really recommend the directional phone. You know, people like the idea of using something like seventh generation and certainly, I could support the idea of supporting a company that's trying to do the right thing. And but Drexel is actually it's made out of proteins from animal apparently. And it's a byproduct of the existing slaughter industry, which is not a beautiful topic, but it's nontoxic in another words.
Interviewer: So, you got non vegan walls, but it's not a toxic bread.
Daniel: Exactly.
Interviewer: All right so give me an idea of what the construction process looks like once you've mixed your phone up in this 55-gallon barrel and you said you've got it on a pivot to avoid having to lift anything, where are you pouring this in? How are you foaming it into a wall structure?
Daniel: Well, you know, if you're building something like a dome or you won't block the stack, then you have a block foam a mold sitting right there besides you, you'll just simply pour it into this mold and when you're done mixing and pouring, you insert metal or even plastic dividers and you wait 24 hours and at the end of that 24 hours, you pull your blocks out of your mold and write them even though they're still somewhat brittle, you can pick them up and begin construction with them right then and that is the more laborers magic, because then you have to mortar these blocks back together. And that's not with regular mortal that would be with an Aircrete mortar and then there's the option to build a cast structure and it can be rectangular. It can be circular, it can be almost any shape as long as you can create a mold to contain your aircrete and until it says, and that casting method is my preferred method because it's just so fast and it takes out so much for the time and the labor.

Interviewer: Okay, so I guess it depends on the design and the foam of your building. Which one might have advantages because, you know, I've heard you mentioned that this is a really good material to take out into the middle of nowhere and be able to construct with a minimal amount of material. But if you have to put together some complicated foam work that's going to up the labor and the difficulty of the bill.
Daniel: Oh, absolutely. Obviously, blocks are the most simplistic way that you can build. And, you know, there's huge industries around using blocks and a lot of your common higher labor of course, already knows how to work with blocks. So, it lends itself to simplicity.
Interviewer: Sure. Now, you mentioned to that there's an Aircrete mortar that needs to be used when assembling the blocks, is that a different mixture? Or are you really just taking what you would normally put into the foams and using that as your mortar?
Daniel: Yeah, for the mortar, it's basically the same thing except you're adding a product which is typically latex or acrylic bonding agents and the reason you put this in the mix as you want it to really stick to the blocks, it's a more thin mixed and standard mortar. And so, you don't want something that's just going to run out and you don't want something that's not fully bond your blocks to create a weak spot in your construction later.
Interviewer: Sure, are there any risks of maybe the influence of impurity either in your foaming agent or during the process that could compromise the foaming ability of the material and cause it to deflate before it cures?
Daniel: Well, generally, the most common thing is if it's deflating, there's been too much water added to the mix and you just simply lose the amount of water. Generally your foam is going to work unless of course you don't have enough of your foaming agent, for example, if you're using a five gallon bucket for your foaming agent, you have an entire 16 ounce bottle of soap into that and so if you run short on soap and the bubbles will pop. And the idea behind the bubble is not to really hold the structure except as long as necessary to entrain into the cement. It's actually the thickness or viscosity of the cement that holds the bubble in place. So, the bubble is just there long enough to get the bubble mixed into the cement.
Interviewer: If that makes sense, now, you mentioned that the bricks or the foam work would be workable within 24 hours but cement takes a longer period of time to cure. So how long would you recommend before putting any kind of load or stress on those blocks are those are the tasks or the mold I suppose before it can really take the amount of pressure that it was designed to?
Daniel: Well, it reaches full design strength in about 28, 30 days. And of course, that depends upon temperature obviously. You can accelerate that by adding hot water to the mixed but generally you know, in 24 hours, you can pick up the box, you can move them, you can go ahead and build a building with them. But obviously, you have to avoid striking them or dropping them or anything that could put a micro-fracture a crack that's going to show up as a break after the block matures.
Interviewer: And once it's fully cured, do you have an idea of how much PSI it can withstand?
Daniel: Yeah, with the equipment that I have my scale tops out, but I'm consistently getting over 168 pounds per square inch.


Interviewer: Okay, that's a good reference point to get an idea of how much of a like roof has you can put on it?
Daniel: If you think about snow load, know how much weight that is. And then you look at how much cement for example, a 450 square foot single bedroom small or tiny house, the whole thing's soaking wet. If it were even possible to get it immediately out of the barrel and stack it up is somewhere around 53,000 pounds and when you actually divide that out over the thickness of a wall that six or eight inches thick, it actually winds up being under 11 pounds per square inch. So, there's actually this tremendous safety margin between what is capable of withstanding versus what is actually put on the structure.
Interviewer: Hmm OK. And now I know especially in the case of the domes you recommend and giving a stucco layer on the entire outer portion of one of these like bubble foams. And I think a lot of people who are familiar with Aircrete in any way have usually seen these types of images and feel like this is how it's gotten become best known. I know I first learned about it when I saw some of those foams at a construction site in Thailand, I believe it was and so covering it then with stucco, this is not still the same Aircrete mixture, this is proper cement concrete stucco.
Daniel: Yeah, correct. First of all, it's you know air Creek has a great amount of compressor strength relatively speaking, but it has very little tensile strength so you know, if you put a lot if you put it on two blocks for example and apply pressure in the middle, it's going to pull apart and the way you strengthen that is with a reinforcing fabric. And this fabric is applied to the exterior with a regular cement mixture that fairly high in acrylic or latex and that is used to bond the outside so it's like a more conventional stucco makes you apply to the exterior, you lay on your fabric and then you work this through the fabric and then you apply a finished coat to the top of the fabric. And you know, acrylics tacos are great if you want to put a second final finish on there. You can just paint it but obviously, because it's a porous cement structure, it can absorb water and it is important to seal it from the elements.
Interviewer: Have you experimented with other types of sealants other than cement stucco? Because it seems to me that while the ease and the transport ability of the equipment and the materials to make something like this potentially in a remote region with be somewhat undercut by the amount of sand or gravel, I guess, gravel not so much for the stucco, but fan that you would have to either import or excavate on site in order to do that final layer?
Daniel: Yeah, we've actually in Mexico, we started using just a elastomer-type brick and stucco paint. So, it's literally just a can of paint that can be applied to see Lyft and it works very successfully. And it's just maybe, you know, would require a little more maintenance in the long run. You know, you need to repaint your structure every few years where something like an acrylic stucco is going to really maintain that seal for a longer period of time.
Interviewer: Sure, I know that the few problems that I've had and I've seen when I worked in the industrial construction trade was more than, you know, given the brittleness of a cement stucco it can have, even if you're not able to see it very easily sort of micro cracks in it that allow moisture through. And I would imagine in the case of putting on a dome like that, that could be a risk to compromise the structure. Have you come up against any issues like that?
Daniel: Well, I haven't so far, because when you put that finish code and fabric on there, it's generally waterproof and it's not going to crack through that fabric and the layer underneath the fabric is generally water resistant. I'm not gonna say waterproof but you know I've never seen an instance where water was able to soak into a wall.
Interviewer: Now you've worked with a whole bunch of different types of designs I've seen on your website especially the dome, so sort of bubble foams that we talked about. But you said you also really like to work with foam work. What are some of your favorite designs that you especially advocate for people who are getting started with this material?
Daniel: Well, you know, you can do rectangular foams, but I just happened to really love the circular foam. And so that cylinder shape is the one I prefer, because you can buy that cheap utility grade plywood, you can slap it together and the very nature of the shape itself, it's almost like when you roll up a sheet of paper, it becomes strong enough that you could put a cup of coffee on top of a sheet of paper. The shape itself holds the foam in place. And with very little effort, you can put up a foam that doesn't cost a lot. And one person could bucket the sand for example, if you were building a small 16 foot Kevin, you can actually make it livable in 14 days because it only takes six, seven days to get the wall and if you're by yourself, and if you, you know, stick to it and get the work done.
Interviewer: Hmm, yeah, I mean, those types of statistics are really promising for people who are working with limited resources or don't necessarily have help available to get a project like this done. Oftentimes, just getting moved into a spot, even if it doesn't happen to be your final finished building on the land can make the difference between continuing to pay rent somewhere else and having the ability to save extra money and put on the time on the site that you need to build something more substantial in the longer run?
Daniel: Yeah, yeah, you're exactly right. Because sometimes, if you can get out of paying rent, for example if you're just starting, that's the quickest way to really move forward on the project. And, you know, sometimes I come up against this all or nothing thinking that people have and you know, it's like, well, I've got to have my mansion and every detail right now but if you take more of the attitude that the original settlers of this country has, then you start with what's necessary and maybe that little initial structure that gets you on the land immediately, maybe that becomes your closet or your bathroom later. Or maybe it's not even a test house, maybe it's a storage building, you know. So yeah, it absolutely lends itself to a quick project that can put you in something. And it's not like a tan or a yurt that really does leave you uncomfortable, these structures are very comfortable.
Interviewer: My favorite part about taking on sort of a smaller project like that Is it a lot of the people who are attempting this for the first time either don't have a lot of construction experience or I guess even in the other case of not being having any familiarity with living in kind of compromised situations like that, where they don't have the luxuries that they're used to or you know, the plumbing and the conveniences. And certainly in my experience, even just living in tents, sometimes you realize how little you actually need to be helping to be happy and the few things that you really miss, you will make a priority when you make another building or design another structure for the longer term.
Daniel: Oh, absolutely. It's in my opinion a great thing to experience because, like you said, you begin to realize what you can do with that and then what you really need and the and sometimes if you just distill it down to the essence of what it is that you need and you can make mistakes on a small project and it's not a deal breaker, it's no have no problem.
Interviewer: For sure. And you mentioned that this has intuitive properties and that's often one of the things that especially natural builders come up against that there are few options for insulating a building if you go purely natural structures. Do you have the stats on our value per inch of Aircrete?
Daniel: Well, I don't have an exact our value you can do it calculating, but what I do is actually measure I just put a video out on YouTube on how to do this. And you can actually raise or lower the temperature restructure and measure it. And what I'm finding is that it's consistently slightly less than a standard fiberglass insulation and per square foot, you know, it takes an additional six and a quarter percent of insulation to achieve the same value. So the walls need to be a little thicker, you know, if you're depending upon a certain value, like, two by fours are 11 or 13 for a two by six wall, then maybe instead of doing a six inch wall, you push it out seven to eight inches, to have an equivalent amount of information.
Interviewer: And let's talk a little bit more about the compromises that we're dealing with using cement as a building material. I mean, you and I went back and forth via email for a little while and I was tentative to promote the idea of Aircrete on this podcast because in the past, I've really focused just on natural materials, but I know you've got experience working with other natural materials in contrast, so how does this stack up in your opinion to natural or more locally produced or less process materials as far as sort of ease of use and construction and impact on the environment through the process and the manufacturer.
Daniel: Okay, um, you know, first of all, it depends upon your environment, whatever you do, whatever you build really needs to be appropriate for where you're at, you know, if you're in the tropics, you don't necessarily need walls but if you're in the northeast, you have driving lanes and cold you need walls. And in a similar manner, whenever you're choosing alternative building in the majority of the climates, if we're designing to be a passive system, you really need insulation and thermal mass and Aircrete ofcourse is structure and it provides insulation as well. And with installation, you you can provide it active source of cooling or you can design to be more passive through using Windows to absorb the heat. But it is different, it does produce a great deal more pollution, natural materials are very nice and forgiving but on the flip side of that is the amount of labor and time it can take you because typically, a lot of natural building requires excavation of quite a lot of material. And if you're doing that by shovel, it's absolutely backbreaking miserable work or you have to rent a large excavator or something to do the work for you or you need a great deal of hands present wherever you're doing your project to get it done. So, again, like I said in the beginning Aircrete is kind of a convenience thing in terms of speed. You know, if paying someone to build alternatively, it often costs a substantial amount more than conventional construction even.
Interviewer: That is true.
Daniel: So, you know, you have to look at your situation, decide what's appropriate for you now, you know, as far asaircreting and what it does to the environment, it's obviously not as environmentally friendly. It's made from limestone; this limestone has to be heated. When you heat limestone, you drive off carbon dioxide, not to mention the energy used in the manufacturing transport of this limestone that becomes our cement. But basically, for every 20 205 pounds of Portland cement that's produced, there's 2044 pounds of carbon dioxide that goes into the air in that production process, you know, if you're just looking strictly at a co2 perspective, and so, to help get an idea of what that means, if you were to build that one bedroom, 450 square foot dome, you would need about 26,200 pounds of cement. And that would off gas into the environment about 24,286 pounds of co2.



Interviewer: And as none insignificant, nothing we compromise with that always is like, get building with industrial materials can go a lot faster. But it's because a lot of the processing, and a lot of the manufacturing has been pre-done for you to make it easy at the point of construction. Whereas because of all that processing not being the case, if you're excavating your materials by hand, if you're felling and shaping wood on your own, you're doing the processing there on site, and because chances are you're using less machinery to do it, the efficiency goes down, but you tend to be paying the money to a person rather than to a corporation and industrial process. And I'm not saying that there aren't, you know, mitigating reasons for both sides. But those were always kind of how I did the calculations for myself and explained it to clients.
Now, I guess the pitfall for me when it comes to industrial materials, especially ones that are lower in price that doesn't reflect the entire process and are easier to assemble is just a matter of like, which industry are you paying, right? Are you paying the industry that, you know, does all of these things through mechanical processes, large mining, everything that you just mentioned with the co2 embedded in it and the transport there, and in facilitating the ease for the user or the construction and the person constructing the building? The risk for me is then that people are going to start slapping up Aircrete buildings or concrete structures or you know, whatever plastic or petroleum-based composite comes out next not thinking through the entire lifespan of the building. Can you talk a little bit about how you see the lifespan of this product weathering over time? Can it be like, does it last as long as cements the way that we think of traditionally? Or does it kind of degrade and fall because it doesn't have the same structural integrity over time?
Daniel: I've never observed any degrading of the material. It's my belief that it can be a multi-generational house. And a lot of it, and this would, of course, apply to any structure. But, you know, if you were to take your gray water and plant just 13 trees beside your structure, you would in 40 years zero the carbon footprint of the structure and
Interviewer: Assuming a very small size of the structure, or what kind of structure are we talking about?
Daniel: Well as an example, a little one small bedroom, 450 square foot dome.
Interviewer: And of course, for reference.
Daniel: Right, you obviously, would want to plant more trees if you're building a bigger structure and of course, you know, realize part of the American attitude, you know, we want to have a 2500 square foot house for a single person who's always at work and never home, you know, so you know, you can I believe you can be responsible with it. And yes, it's a big deal to go out and strip mine a mountain range or something for limestone, as opposed to explaining local materials. And it's definitely nice to actually put the money in the hands of a person instead of a soulless Corporation. But, you know, as far as offsetting the carbon footprint, you can do that the shade from the trees, you know, electricity uses, you know, actually that the cost of ownership of a home is often living in the home more than the home itself. And it even holds true for the co2. You know, for each kilowatt of electricity produce it’s something like 1.4 pounds of co2 released. So over that same 40 year period, if you're using electricity, like the average American that's nearly 600,000 pounds of co2 because you're using electricity from the grid or if you're driving to work, you know, over that same period of time for what the average American over that 40 years, you produce 2 million pounds of carbon dioxide driving.
Interviewer: Yeah, and ultimately, that's why I was really looking forward to this conversation because though I'm not entirely convinced that Aircrete is sort of the solution compared to natural buildings. It does offer a much more positive alternative to conventional, industrial and highly disruptive construction, and is perhaps a stepping stone towards a better way of building but also because I have read some of your articles and heard some of your talks not only on other podcasts, but in your videos. And I can tell that you've thought through more of the process of regardless of the material itself, kind of how we live in design with our homes is the bigger issue because I mean, you know, having worked with natural materials in the past, you can design a consumptive building with natural materials, you can still live a consumptive lifestyle, a wasteful lifestyle, even if you kind of, you know, invest in sustainable or regenerative technologies and in green this and that, you know, it has much more to do with the decisions that you make on a daily basis, and how or where you're sourcing your resources that you depend on a regular time and from the designs and especially the integration of things like appropriate technology which you've mentioned in in other articles, you can kind of offset this smaller building costs through yes, and the decisions and the infrastructure that you put in and around it.
So, can you talk about some of the other features that you would advocate for integrating in with an Aircrete building?
Daniel: Absolutely. You know, talking about the amount of co2 and energy used, honestly, you know, there's all this great alternative stuff out there, you probably have heard of cool tubes where you bury pipes in the ground and they create cooling for your house. Yeah, and so, you know, it sounds like such a great idea. But then you actually put the energy costs into it to make that effective to move enough air through a system like that, you wind up using enough energy, that is the equivalent to using something like a ground source heat pump. With one you're at the mercy of what the environment gives you. And if you live in an environment where is consistently hot, you may not be cool enough, certainly by the end of the summer. And then you've got the issue of a system that grows mold that you can't clean and, you know, society as you're talking about it with all this prepackaged stuff, and it's the very lifestyles that we live and the value that we create placed on things that I think maybe the core issue for example, I could go out on my property and just using the small trees and sticks and limbs, I could build a double walled waddling doghouse. Maybe I put a liner in a bottom for waterproofing and then I fill it with straw to give me an AR 32 insulating house this bill, you know, 99% free from local onsite materials. But the way society structure it's so much more quote, valuable to use my time to just go buy a truckload of clay and a truckload of sand and some timber and sand, cut it up and then assemble an artificial structure out of natural materials. And, yeah, so you know, there's always that struggle with there. Because like you said, you can make an alternative building it can be as industrial and more costly and more harmful even than buying something from a larger source. So, you know it's kind of like that permaculture setting. It depends, right? You know, you know.





Interviewer: It always depends. Yeah. And if someone has a bottle answer for it, you can almost pay yourself that it's going to be wrong. Because if you're not taking in considerations of context, the place a lifestyle, all of those factors, it's not really going to be a solution that works for those things. And I do appreciate that aspect that perspective that you bring to this. And I certainly don't consider myself to be such a purist. I mean, even as a natural builder myself, I've worked in industrial building trades. And I don't think I don't know of anybody who's built an entirely natural building. I mean, you're still using screws and nails at the very least and if you want electricity and plumbing, good luck trying to find natural materials that will achieve those types of things for you. I mean, we just live a lifestyle and in a world that requires a certain amount of industrial inputs in order to interact with it the way that it was designed. And so, a certain amount of compromise and hybridize of traditional skills, natural materials, and the context of the modern world has to happen and I think that this is a very important conversation to have when you get to the point of designing for context in place. And before I forget it, though, because we are kind of going deeper into the philosophy of the building and delivering environments that we create for ourselves.
You talked a bit about how you really liked the rounded and the stone design and certainly this isn't unique just toAircrete but I've seen a lot in Earthbag constructions or sometimes called superadobe and it can be achieved with a number of different types of materials. Son, one thing that I've always personally found and I've had a lot of clients come to me because people get really enamored with this curvy organic or circular shape in the design of their homes but it can be really hard to furnish; to add the types of things that we're used to. Everything from tables and chairs to washing machines. They're all built for rectilinear design.
How have you overcome that and worked it out within your own buildings or do you just simply make everything custom?
Daniel: Well, you know, things like cabinets against the walls are going to have to be custom but we have to deal with the mindset too. We've often grown up in sticks box houses, our furniture's square so we shove it the wall and we walk through the middle of the room but if you actually stop and think about it a little differently; instead of trying to do the same thing with a different shape, instead of shoving the square peg in a round hole, you can put your furniture in the middle, facing outwards and let the outer rounded edges be the walkways and the pathways. So, it just requires a little different layout and thought process.
It's actually pretty amazing how roomy the structure can feel and how you can kind of avoid a lot of those issues by just simply not packing everything around the edge because it's not a box and it is curved. Obviously. things like appliances and stoves, they're just going to come off the shelf the way they are unless you're going to build a rocket cob indoor stove and heater.




Interviewer: You definitely should, those things are super cool. I agree with all of that except for one part. When it comes to domes, I'm not crazy tall but I'm 6 ft and if I'm walking around the edge of a dome and it starts to curve in, I've often found that really uncomfortable. And though I'm totally on board, I love a curvilinear or a more organic form for interior shapes. I really agree, it can feel a lot roomier and certainly a lot more comforting than boxy and hard shaped with sharp lines and such. But certainly I would recommend for people who are a little bit taller to consider how you're going to move around in that space because if you've got a hunch or kind of bend as you're going around, it's fun for a novelty but if you're going to be doing that every day, it's a point that you want to consider in the design.
Daniel: Absolutely. Obviously with cylinders that's not an issue. Now, with domes because it looks artistic and kind of nice, we actually raised the entire structure above the equator. I advocate using 3D software and if it's going to be your house, it's you decide how close you need to be to the wall. I'd say about a foot or maybe 6 inches. For my height, I won't be able to walk up to the wall without hitting my head on the wall. So, we'll either raise the entire structure and let it tuck under, more like a spear or we'll actually put it on a stem wall. But absolutely, you do need to be aware of that issue because nobody wants to walk around having to lean their head to one side or bend over, that would never be comfortable.
Interviewer: I've just smacked my head on too many things to not mention that when talking about the design process [laughs]. To get back into the theory and the concept of the design and the way that we live and such. I just finished having a conversation with April McGill who's been on this podcast before and is going to be on an episode soon, maybe even before this one. And we kind of had come through a round-a-bout way to the conclusion that if you want to live as healthy as possible you want to live as close to the outdoors as possible. Certainly, that is easier in certain climates than it is in others. Like you mentioned, in tropical areas where you barely need walls, maybe just sort of insect guards and nets in a lot of cases if your roof overhangs are tall enough.
What kind of environment does Aircrete allow for? I know that the insulation allows you then to live comfortably in a range of climates where the temperature swings are more extreme without having to import too much energy to do that but what are some of the design techniques within that, that you would advocate for to allow for ventilation and make sure that you're still letting nature into the space?
Daniel: First of all, I really like good light and I'm a really a big fan of these polished, aluminum tubes. They don't let a lot of heat in but they really bring a lot of light in. Air quality is very important. These domes, it's not like normal houses and fiberglass. Air does not blow through these walls, it's a very tight structure and it's absolutely necessary that you ventilate them properly otherwise, you're going to wind up with sweating walls and a humid environment and just generally unhealthy. What I really prefer in this example, is to install...if you're in the South you can install the energy recovery ventilator. If you're in the North you need a heat recovery ventilator but it's basically a box with an air heat exchanger and a fan. It doesn't pull much power at all but it allows you to exchange the volume of the entire structure at least six times a day, that way the air stays fresh. It has the advantage of balancing the incoming and outgoing air temperatures so that you're not just wasting energy. If it's 100 outside, you don't want it to be 100 inside, you want to balance that air out without having to run your air conditioner more. It's a good modern way to do that. If I wasn't going to do that then I would probably put in a skylight that can be opened and some lower windows in the direction of the prevailing breeze. Of course, that depends on your lifestyle again, if you want to live open. I really do like living outdoors and I totally agree with the idea. In fact, I love the idea of having an outdoor kitchen and when possible, doing the living outside and just retreating to a smaller living space when the weather is just not hospitable.
Interviewer: I've described this in the past to clients and then some of my design workshops have like a gradient that you want to achieve where only the most essential functions like sleeping, in some cases, eating and washing are fully enclosed inside of a building. Now obviously this is going to change in the climate and the area that you're living in and how many months out of the year it's comfortable for you to actually shift a lot of your functions into the outdoors. But then once the essentials are kind of taking up enough storage space to store your essentials as well, try and move as many of your daily tasks into various states f outdoors. So, maybe one would be two or three walls encompassing an outdoor kitchen or a living room space and from there on, perhaps a semi-translucent roof and maybe one or no walls, just a stick frame around it, all the way out to a point where it's like stippled shade and water can still get through depending on the appropriateness of that design for your site. Have you worked with any designs like that? Integrating Aircrete or other natural materials into the finished product?
Daniel: Well, a lot of what I do right now is private workshops. We'll go out and teach people and they'll build their own houses. With Aircrete, I haven't had any real opportunity to do much more than create a nice trellised area with a lot of plants growing on it and a water feature that we have a nice, cool living space. That way, you're living area is generally outside most of the time. In other alternative structures, I've worked with Earthships and so, obviously you've got the interior wall, you've got the greenhouse area, you've got an exterior wall; those work great in so many climates. In New Mexico where they build them, it may be 113 during the day but then it's also 53 at night so, it works perfectly. In my climate, we've built one structure where we have an outdoor kitchen. It was a more conventional rammed-earth house with foam insulation on it but we have a nice big outdoor kitchen that's designed, the shrubbery goes out in a V or it opens up into the prevailing breeze. It literally focuses the wind down on the area where you're going to be standing. It creates a natural breeze way that's very comfortable and then we have vines on the top. I do most of the cooking out there except whenever the weather is not good. I've had the opportunity to do that on a couple of occasions, just one with Aircrete.

Interviewer: Nice. Well, it seems to me like this is kind of an insulately mold-able tool, easy to work with; especially for people without technical experience and a lot of skills. Though I have some hang ups about the material itself I am very curious to see how this develops because it's only been a few years since I even really saw this come out on the scene and it's really exploded in popularity; even to the point where a couple of my natural builder friends are getting involved with Aircrete builds and advocating for it to their clients too, just because of the ease and the quickness of the builds.
I really appreciate you coming and sharing some of your perspective and experience on this as well as some good, hard information. I know you have a whole lot more that you could share with us but it's very well covered in your videos and on your website so, before I let you go, could you direct our listeners to where they can learn more and get in touch with you?
Daniel: Absolutely. You can find me at thetinygiantlife.biz. There's links to most of everything there. We do workshops, we sell an online video course if you need a little extra something. Of course, we have a YouTube channel, The Tiny Giant Lifestyle and it's intended to be more about lifestyle design than Aircrete specifically but Aircrete seems to be gaining quite a bit of interest. There's all the information about anything you would need to know for free in there. You just kind of have to dig through the videos and you'll find it.
Interviewer: Fantastic. Daniel, thank you so much for coming on here and sharing such a well thought out perspective from experiences with both industrial and natural building. I hope that we can catch up again and I'd love to hear more as things develop and new design ideas come through. This has been really cool so, thank you so much for your time.
Daniel: Well, I thank you for having me and you have yourself a great evening.
Interviewer: Yeah, you too. Cheers. Bye.

END OF INTERVIEW













Daniel: Honestly, I still have the battle sometimes between completely natural and then, you know.
Interviewer: Well, I think we from both sides made a good point on how, you know, there is no such thing as a fully natural building anymore. You can't live in the modern world without the amenities of industrial construction, but also giving a good idea from your perspective. Like, I love that you have worked in natural building before because a lot of the Aircrete people that I've seen out there, like, that's just all they do, and they don't have a whole lot of reference for other ways of building and are kind of caught up in somewhat of the fat of it. But I really appreciate it yeah, that you have this perspective from both sides. And more than anything that you've really thought through the building design components and the lifestyles that go with them being kind of the more important part. Aircrete, we can be kind of a way of facilitating that transition to a healthier lifestyle. But there are also other ways of doing that too.
Daniel: Right? At the very least, at least you have a house that's not off gassing a lot of different chemicals that can cause for sure for sure, but the convenience factor is nice and you know, I never really planned on doing this or trying to start up any kind of business in it but there seems to be a great demand and I don't want to demonstrate anything that I don't have built and ready to see. But you know, soon we'll be going with a waddle indoor double walled house you know, this hopefully, almost completely passive and Use some nice sky radiant cooling because is only works.
Interviewer: What's your installation in between that?
Daniel: We're going to use just we'd actually really hollow stem leads you know; they hold air inside of them.
Interviewer: Whether they hold up to mold and buggers as well.
Daniel: We're going to first soak everything in Bork acid and then dry it out and then use it infill probably again you know again I can't make it completely natural getting insulating in that I need a vapor barrier at the bottom because we are already humid climate so but anyway you know point being that eventually I'll be able to demonstrate that and I don't like showing people things that haven't been demonstrated and but you're definitely moving there but then you know sheet metal roof you know yes manufacture product but at the same time I don't have to go cut another cedar tree every three to five years and making.
Interviewer: And you can collect rainwater off the top without having to worry about the preservative in the wood contaminating your rainwater.
Daniel: Exactly.
Interviewer: So that's one thing about cedar that really bummed me out. I was like, yeah, that's so cool. Oh, it kind of poisons your drinking water if you're trying to collect rainwater from the roof.
Daniel: So yeah, you know, it's always a struggle. There's compromises and there's upsides to everything, it's always a struggle to kind of balance them out and fit that in with the context and the place and everything is it makes it so much more work than it's easy to charge clients or like that's, I don't even do contracting anymore. I just do design and consultant for exactly that reason. I just couldn't make it pay when it comes. Like if I was going to do everything as a responsibly and well thought out as I always wanted to. I like I just couldn't make it affordable for the clients who are coming for exactly that type of lifestyle. Yeah, I got more into the patient side. I was like, Look, if you really want to build this within your budget, you're going to have to learn how to do a lot of it yourself.
Daniel: Yeah, I've had quite a few people asking me to build their houses. But you know, it's it is a real struggle. I mean, because in our society, we've value convenience and affordability and affordability and okays often means the ability to finance it at a bank and this play it out and so that becomes very difficult with natural building. And then if you're going to source everything ethically, that becomes a problem. Because really, at its root is the society itself has got some issues that its roots, you know.
Interviewer: Yeah. And it's tricky because, you know, a lot of the cases, like, unless you're doing it yourself, you're basically trying to get someone else to build a sustainable or resilient or regenerative lifestyle for you and you still maintain a disconnect from the process from the natural systems that support you, which, I mean, you know, everyone's got to go through their own transition and their own choices themselves but it should cost more to outsource it to somebody else to pay someone to do a good job for you know, and you know and a lot of people who are working in you know IT or any of these other trades that pay so much more fine that's great. You'll be able to pay other people with other skill sets to do that. But if you're trying to make it on, working person's budget and pay somebody else to do it, it's You're cutting corners, like you've just gotta, at some point by down to realize that you have to take more responsibility for the processes of your life. If you want to actually live that way.
Daniel: You're right. It's kind of like saying, I'm going to go buy a smart car, I'm going to save the world or save the whales because I'm burning half as much gas. It doesn't solve the root problem.
Interviewer: Right, at some point, you're gonna have to reconnect with the sources of sustenance in your life. Yeah, it's tricky. Certainly tricky. Yeah. I'm glad that there are so many more voices advocating for this. These days I never struggled to find people for the podcast, there's a much, much bigger interest in industry is propping up around the stuff that I thought I was kind of on the fringe of a couple of years ago when I was starting, but even by then is taken hold pretty well. So that's at least encouraging
Daniel: I would say yes and to see that industry and that awareness and that willingness to live differently, it's really starting to show up now and letting her just me. There's a lot of people that they need to make that transition and that's where Aircrete kind of comes in for the people I'm talking to is that literally they can go by themselves a little like lot on the edge of town and in two weeks they're in something. And that rent money can then go into whatever they want to improve.

Interviewer: That's really when it comes down to like if you fully embrace the lifestyle of taking responsibility for every part of your consumption, but also your contributions. It like I never advocate for anybody to go fully self-sustaining, because it's entirely inefficient. If you're doing it by yourself or with a small family. It still needs to be integrated with a part of a community and a larger understanding of the systems that we interact with. But if you're willing to make it a lifestyle like you really can still get away from most of the traps of consumers and wasteful living if you're willing to change how you live?
Daniel: Well, you know, I was I was an IT manager for five years now. And then Exxon bought out the company that my company worked for and without notice, I was laid off along with about two thirds of the workforce from that company and I've been studying a lot of this, and it was a great opportunity. So, I cashed out what a little bit of retirement money I had from that job. And I actually did live off the land for about a year and a half. And I was able to produce or force all my own food and I didn't produce any trash, there's no need to pay trash service and have it thrown in else's backyard. But it was an amazing lifestyle that honestly it does require a lot of change. And a lot of people have a hard time making that mental leap but man, it was a good life. But as I learned, you can't you can survive and produce everything. But then as I got to talking to old timers in the area, you know, they had nice little community things like this to an old community to get together. We're like at the end of this crop season, everybody was just kind of get together used to be at the town square but now it's shrunk down to about five people to get together at a little community building. But basically, if you're growing apricot and you have an abundance and you just bring everything up there, everybody's free to pick up what they need, try and try and live in trade.
Yeah, but try and do everything yourself is difficult. And community. I mean, obviously, you know, music being a great example. I love music, but I'm just not totally inclined to play in this.
Interviewer: Yeah, see, that's what I mean to like, I think it is realistic for someone with the means to get started kind of running like with some land on their own to produce all their own food. When you talk about your own entertainment, your own fibers, your own clothing, your own tools, your own electricity, like that's where it's like not film. Don't do that, like hook up with a community, someone's going to be better. And at any of those things to produce enough of the surplus that you can focus on the things that you're better at. And you can trade those surpluses to them within each other. And that's, I mean, that's how our species has survived over time. It's not by going off into little family units trying to do it all ourselves.
Daniel: Alright, and I think we're designed to function that way. I mean, really, you know, just the interaction you get with other people when you're doing this is what's great and obviously, you know, me personally, I would hate to sit there and knit something together that would just drive me crazy but there's other people who love it. It's their vain. And we all complement one another as a species.



Interviewer: Absolutely. Yeah. And people, you know, make those little tasks their own, you know, like knitting was not usually something that people did in isolation, like older women in the community would get together and socialize and talk about their lives and stuff and while they were living and trade patterns and techniques and whatever, you know, it's the a lot of these things came out of the socialized versions of them that helped it to spread hope is to train other people but also fostered connection in community more than the actual production of other things.
Daniel: Oh, absolutely because
Interviewer: That's what I've gotten really interested in a lot lately. Like I've done a series on the podcast in the past. I'm not sure if you've heard it, like on community building and what it means to create healthy communities and it's an aspect of an interview that I'm publishing actually this Friday with Mark Lakeman, who's an architect who's worked a lot on designing communities that are healthy that have communal congregation spaces and undoing sort of the violence and the disconnect from colonial infrastructure. And that kind of stuff really inspires me especially to know that I've moved to Europe where the communities are configured differently, right? A lot of them except for some of the newer developments were all made before car infrastructure could transport you to a supermarket really quick. And so, you can walk around all of these communities with no problem, right? And just feeling how that's different in the way that you go about your daily tasks is been interesting to observe. And this is something that I've picked up as I've lived around different parts of the world and definitely makes you think about that when you get into design projects of your own.
Daniel: Absolutely, I would love in fact, I'm, I kind of want to put together my own my own but you know, a community eventually, but I'm not there yet. I went to Argentina and you know, they had kicked out the international bankers the Federal Reserve, the IMF, International Monetary Fund, they kicked them all out so late, they packed up all their currency left the country and you know, they were barely able to get by, and then they had 100% terrible anything imported, so it really kept the industrial system out of there for a while. And it was really neat to stay in a community for a period of time where, you know, it wasn't like you went to the grocery store, who had a product made by a company that just doesn't care about, you know, profit for the company. And then you're going to a checkout lady who doesn't care or know anything about a product and just, you know, might even give you an attitude for having to do her job whereas there, literally, if you wanted fruit, you went to the fruit guy as you walk down the street.
Interviewer: The guy who grew it.
Daniel: Exactly, the guy who grew the fruit who picked it that morning and brought it in his family or maybe some higher health, depending on the size of it. And then if you wanted vegetables, you went down the street to the vegetable guy. If you're a meat eater, you went to the meat market where they literally just brought the cow in and it really was, it was very.



Interviewer: When you have a conversation with that person, right and you understand what the life is like, what their routines are, how those animals are, how those products were raised or taken care of, and how but you know, it's a much more connected way of operating within a community.
Daniel: Absolutely. I ran across you know, just talking especially human experiencing find out Oh, you don't have running water and you're trying to get running water but you don't know how to wire this stuff up. And it's like, Well, okay. When do you have some time I went over there and I, I hope doesn't float switches in a pump. So, we got water pumps up to an elevated tank and for the first time in their life, they had running water. I mean, they were they were dancing in the water and of course, I'm thinking immediately man, look how much more water are wasting now but anyway. It was an interesting observation for myself. But then he gave me what you know, if you had to put a monetary value to it in garden produce, was probably substantially more than the monetary value, what I provided him and so sure it's just like
Interviewer: That amount of money it would have cost him more to pay you what you would have done just through that closed transaction right? And I love exploring the possibility of those types of transactions that are not so rigid that leave opportunities for like a friendly amount of debt, which allows people to actually go above and beyond the payments that are required and those things build connections and relationships more than just you know, the closed transactions that money creates.
Daniel: Right, there's this reciprocity, you do something nice for somebody just because you can I mean, and you don't have you don't have this schedule this unbelievable. I mean right, actually down there after lunch, they go into CS until pretty much sundown.
Interviewer: I'm accommodating myself to the schedule here to like people waiting up at 10. I'm used to a farm schedule I used to wake up at like five. And for me sleeping in is like 630 here and then people go to bed at you know, one or two after eating dinner at 10. And I'm like, Okay, how much of this am I going to take on myself and how much is it just like, I need to have a certain amount like I want to see the sunrise most days. yeah, I'm taking naps. I'm taking on the siesta lifestyle man. I'm all about it.
Daniel: It's a kind of a nice way to live.
Interviewer: It is. I mean, especially. I've had people like, like, I like sleeping too much. That's why I have these long nights. I'm like, I like sleeping more than you. I do it twice a day.
Yeah, well, anyway, Daniel, I gotta get on here. But it was a real pleasure talking to you. I'm really glad that you reached out to the podcast and let's stay in touch if you get that modeling dog project going, I would love to lease the pictures and learn more about what you're working on.
Daniel: Well, I'll get back in touch with you whenever I got a new project that might be of interest. And right now, you just got to finish out the year and I've kind of got a schedule that's keeping me busier than I want to be.
Interviewer: Awesome. Well, that's get some festive.
Daniel: Yeah, it's just about getting to the point that I can demonstrate a finished product. You know, it's not like I can just create a building each and every day and then have a new presentation. So just a matter of time. But I do appreciate you and what you're doing in your podcasts. And thanks so much.
Interviewer: Yeah. And feel free to leave, you know, feedback or let me know what you think about other things as they come out. If you get a chance to listen to, I'm always happy to get someone else's opinion, who knows?
Daniel: Absolutely. I'll do it.
Interviewer: All right, take care Daniel, thanks so much for your time.
Daniel: You too.
Interviewer: All right. Bye bye.