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Earth Workshops

17 - 19th September 2010

Eltham Community and Reception Centre

801 Main Road, Eltham 3095

Conference Speakers

Earth Workshops

 EBAA Conference 2010 Master of Ceremonies.

Professor Allan Rodger Welcome address by Prof Allan Rodger, Patron of EBAA. Allan is the Patron of The Earth Building Association of Australia was Master of Ceremonies for the Conference Allan Rodger is Professor Emeritus, The University of Melbourne. From 1974 to 1996 he was Professor of Architecture in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning of the University of Melbourne. He has pioneered two major interrelated issues: Self-Help Housing and Sustainable Settlement, co-convened three (local, national and international) conferences on Self-Help Housing and Earth Architecture, operated the Greenhouse Effect Programme of the International Union of Architects (UIA), established the Sustainable Development of the Built Environment: Road from Rio programme for the UIA, advised the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and drafted the Chicago Declaration of Interdependence for a Sustainable Future - the environmental manifesto of the architecture profession worldwide. He formed and led the winning team in the National Ideas Competition for Ecologically Sustainable Urban Development. Consultancies on sustainability have been undertaken for leading universities, the United Nations, OECD and a number of Australia's state and territory governments. Allan is currently Chairman of the Board of the Habitat Trust. He was previously a Member of the Board of Banksia Environmental Foundation, Chairman of the Australian Club of Rome, and Foundation Board Member of the CERES project and Greenhouse Action Australia.

Ray Trappel Ray is the Vice President of EBAA and was the assistant Master of Ceremonies for the Conference. Ray is an Architect and Builder operating in the Blue Mountains area of Sydney. With his wife Lynne (also a qualified Architect) and various staff members they have designed and built a large number of  buildings in the medium of unfired earth, especially puddled mud brick. Ray often mentions one local school project where he made the mud bricks for the project on site from intercepted clay fill that otherwise would have been carted some distance away to a landfill site, as waste. This counted as the lowest possible embodied energy of a wall building material, the appropriately named  "negative embodied energy". Ray lives in a mud brick house and for many years has been widely promoting the greater use of unfired earth. Ray is a past president of the Earth Building Association of Australia and is currently serving as the Vice President of EBAA. Ray consistently provides much of the significant effort to produce the EBAA newsletter "Dirt", and was recently responsible for leading the development of Dirt into an electronic format, the so called "eDirt"  thereby allowing much more widespread dissemination of the EBAA message. www.trappelarchitects.com.au

 EBAA Conference 2010 Speakers.

	Geoffrey London Geoffrey London's opening speech  Geoffrey London is the Victorian Government Architect. He is also the Professor of Architecture at The University of Western Australia and has held the position of Professorial Fellow at The University of Melbourne. He was, for a period of nearly five years, the inaugural Government Architect in Western Australia. He is a past Dean and Head of School at UWA, past Chair of the Committee of Heads of Architecture Schools of Australasia, a past President of the Western Australian Chapter of the Australian Institute of Architects, and a Life Fellow of the Institute. He is currently a member of the Australian Research Council’s College of Experts and has acted as a consultant on numerous architectural and urban design projects. He has served on and acted as Chair of many architectural design award juries and a large number of competition juries.
	Terry Williamson Assoc Prof University of Adelaide, School of Architecture Landscape Architecture and Urban Design Terry was the Keynote Speaker of the conference Click here to open his conference paper. More Politics than Science: The Dirt on Star Ratings Improving energy efficiency in Australian homes aimed in particular at reducing greenhouse gas emissions has been a concern of successive Australian governments over the last 20 years or so. Providing this “energy-efficiency” has developed into a multi-billion dollar component of the building & construction industry and this price will most likely soar with the 2010 update of the Building Code of Australia (BCA) that increases the energy efficiency stringency to a so called 6 Star energy rating or equivalent for new residential buildings, and a significant increase in the energy efficiency requirements for all new commercial buildings. More... Terry brings expert and detailed thermal knowledge of high thermal mass materials to the conference. In 2009 Terry was awarded the IBPSA Award for Distinguished Service to Building Simulation. This IBPSA award recognizes an individual who has a distinguished record of contributions to the field of building performance simulation, over a long period. Terry was educated in engineering and architecture in Australia and is Associate Professor of the School of Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Design at Adelaide University, Australia. He has taught, researched and published in areas of energy, thermal performance and sustainability related to the built environment. Terry is the author (or co-author) of over one hundred publications including books, journal articles and conference papers. He is currently Associate Dean (Information Technology) of the Faculty of Professions. More...
	Garry Baverstock AM B.Arch, MSc,LFRAIA, MISES, MANZSES Conference Paper Adjunct Professor, Murdoch University, For over 30 years Garry Baverstock has been designing, building educating and researching in the field of ESD. Winning 8 WA Home of the Year Awards, a MBA Award, 2 James Hardie Awards in the 1990’s, a Green-smart and two Awards of Merit from the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA) as well as numerous design competition successes in the housing design area. This has seen Garry become one of the important leaders in the field in Australia. Recent projects such as the Millennium Home (2000), the Eagle Bay Beach House (2003) and the Eco-Compound in Cottesloe (2004) demonstrate the transfer of this long experience into contemporary 21st century residential architecture. More......
	Richard Glover Richard's Diary ‘Four friends, one block of land, no power tools’. “Imagine this -- with mudbrick you have a building that is made out of the very earth it stands on ... There is another thing: the stuff is free. Once we buy the land we′ll have no money left. This way we can get started as soon as we have the block”.’ Richard Glover is the author of twelve books, including the bestsellers In Bed with Jocasta, The Dag’s Dictionary and Desperate Husbands. He writes a weekly column for the Sydney Morning Herald and presents the comedy show Thank God It’s Friday on ABC Radio. To fi nd out more, please visit www.richardglover.com.au. Richard's most recent book is The Mud House : Richard came down from Sydney to join the conference as guest speaker at the dinner at Montsylvat on Saturday night. Richard's highly entertaining and humerouse presentation in such a monumental and historical setting was sensational. He is a very public "muddie". His book "The Mud House" is available to new members and current renewals.
	Linda Dvorak Conference Presentation Linda is a highly-motivated task-driven Engineer with significant Design and Manufacturing skills. Her background includes expertise as a Senior Program Analyst combined with over two years experience on various Sustainability projects. She has a Bachelor of Engineering, Mechanical and Manufacturing (Manufacturing major) University of Melbourne, and has recently been awarded a Master of Engineering, Sustainable Energy, RMIT, with first class honours.  As a Sustainability Engineer, Linda has been responsible for various sustainability projects in the areas of carbon footprint reduction; energy auditing; energy efficiency; designing sustainable housing, cities and vehicles; and performing Life Cycle Assessments. Her list of clients includes the Victorian Government, Ford Motor Company of Australia, RMIT, University of Melbourne, and University of NSW.  Currently a resident in Eltham, Victoria, and mother to very young children, Linda plans one day to build a bushfire-resistant, non-toxic, and environmentally sustainable home for her family to live in a bush environment.
	John Mofflin Conference Paper John is currently a Director and General Manager of the Jack Thompson Foundation Ltd. John owned and operated a trucking company in Sydney in the 1980’s. He moved onto working in the logging industry near Wauchope, NSW. In the 90’s John owned and operated a landscape supplies and commercial wholesale potting mix business in the Mid North Coast, NSW. He also supplied building materials to owner builders in the region, gaining knowledge of milling techniques and building practices.  He attended the Garma festival in 2007 and was moved by the stories he heard of overcrowded homes and the ensuing social problems. Through his knowledge of timber milling and building, he realized how the timber growing in the area could be used to solve the chronic housing shortage in Arnhem Land. People living ‘on country’ could be taught to build their own houses out of the ‘living ground’. He approached Jack Thompson, for his support and Jack fully seeing the potential of the idea offered his backing and the Jack Thompson Foundation was born.  John lived in Northeast Arnhem Land for 9 months in 2008, working with the Yolngu people, teaching logging and milling techniques and facilitating instruction on how to build their own homes, it was a resounding success; this constituted the Jack Thompson Foundation pilot project. Since then the Foundation has been spearheaded by John’s continued voluntary commitment. John has become a Keynote speaker at conferences in the area of Indigenous issues and has gained respect in remote communities throughout Australia as an advocate and champion of Indigenous issues. John Mofflin is an ordinary bloke with an extraordinary Vision. http://www.jackthompsonfoundation.com/
	Rob Hadden Rob Hadden is a serially obsessed builder and probably should feature in 'Psychiatric Weekly' as a case study. He began building in 1982 and hasn't stopped to draw breath since.  Going where angels fear to tread and always pushing his limits produces some odd buildings. Some would say that is very apt! The original source of inspiration can be traced back to Montsalvat where as young art student in 1969, he was inspired by the use of mud, timber, stone and lime. This combined with the love of the English timber framing tradition has seen his work grow in complexity and experimentation.  As a largely self taught framer working alone he gets to construct buildings that many folk in commercial operation can only dream about. He likes to incorporate many organic shapes inherent in the salvaged trees that he uses. Combined with thick mud walls and/or wattle and daub, the large timbers dominate the interiors (and exteriors as well) creating a style that owes nothing to the present day. Pushing sustainable building methods to their limit, he produces houses with the lowest (and he can can go lower) embodied energy imaginable. His buildings incorporate so much embodied knowledge as well that enables his constructions to be repaired/replaced indefinitely. We have to regain that knowledge again so that we can maintain our buildings well into the future. The no maintenance house is a myth and the amount of energy used to create many 'sustainable, eco-friendly, environmental' products still has to be accounted for.
	Associate Professor Veronica Soebarto School of Architecture, Landscape Architecture & Urban Design The University of Adelaide  Challenges of Earth Buildings Earth building materials, such as rammed earth and mud bricks, are considered ‘sustainable’ building materials due to their low embodied energy, durability, and constructability (environmental performance); availability and affordability (economic performance), and aesthetic quality (social performance). Their thermal performance is also often claimed to be ‘superior, ‘providing excellent protection from extreme weather’, thus ‘lowering heating and cooling needs’. Despite these qualities and experiences shared by people living in them, it is difficult for earth buildings to comply with current building codes particularly the Energy Efficiency Provisions of the Building Code of Australia (BCA). When rated with the available rating tools, earth buildings often fail to comply and only by insulating the building can the minimum requirement be achieved. Thermal monitoring studies of earth buildings both unoccupied and occupied have also shown that without being insulated, these buildings can be considered ‘cold’ in winter if the common thermal comfort criteria is applied. In a study in South Australia, the winter temperatures in a room in earth buildings can be up to 7 degrees lower than the temperatures of a similar room in an insulated earth building. In summer, earth buildings tend to be cooler than insulated earth buildings, which shows the advantage of using un-insulated earth materials. Interestingly, in the studies that were shown in this presentation, earth houses did not use much energy for heating (and cooling) despite the fact that their winter temperatures were much lower than the Standards would recommend as the ‘comfort zone’. More importantly, the actual energy use in these buildings was indeed much lower than that of average houses. Thus the claim that using earth materials could lower heating and cooling needs may indeed be based on evidence; however, they have not been supported by thorough research. So, where is the mismatch between the prediction, monitoring result of the space temperatures, and actual energy use? What other factors that have not been taken into account and investigated thoroughly? Her presentation examined some factors that have not been considered in assessing earth buildings. It then proposed a number of avenues to be considered by the earth buildings community in order for the actual performance of these buildings to be understood and communicated correctly. Veronica received a PhD in Architecture in 1996 and Master of Architecture in 1992, both from Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, and a Bachelor of Architectural Engineering from the University of Indonesia. Prior to joining The University of Adelaide in 1998, she was a Post Doctoral Research Associate at Texas A&M University, a lecturer at The University of Indonesia and a practicing architect in an architecture firm in Jakarta, Indonesia. Her main research areas include building thermal/energy simulation and thermal and environmental assessments of buildings. She was a Co-Chief Investigator of an ARC-Discovery-funded research project (2002-2005), a member of the International Energy Agency Task 28: Solar Sustainable Housing (2000-2005), and a partner investigator of UNSW in an Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) research project in 2003. She is a member of Advisory Editorial Board of Building and Environment (The International Journal of Building Science and its Applications) and Journal of Building Performance Simulation. She is the Immediate Past President of the International Building Performance Simulation Association (IBPSA) Australasia and Board member of IBPSA World.
	James Fricker, B.MechEng, CPEnge, F.AIRAH, M.EngAust James Fricker of James M Fricker Pty Ltd (http://fricker.net.au), is a specialist independent consulting engineer. His work includes building insulation research, HVAC equipment R&D, development of engineering software, and technical editor. Major clients have included ABCB, AFIA, ICANZ, AIRAH, CSIRO and Turbocor. He has been a lecturer in air conditioning subjects at RMIT and Swinburne University. He is author of several papers about insulation, building energy use, and indoor air quality. James talked on his recent paper that reviews some basics of the thermal comfort performance of buildings, with examples of how thermal mass, insulation, climate and embodied energy of building materials, can all affect life-cycle energy use. Some energy efficiency requirements of the Building Code of Australia, 2010, were also discussed and related to earth building construction.
	Peter Hickson Peter is a designer and builder of unfired earth homes. Peter also consults and trains people in the design and construction of earthen buildings and other environmental buildings. As the current  present President of EBAA he has helped to raise the awareness surrounding unfired earthbuilding in Australia. Peter has a wide knowledge of earth building and has built a model low cost 2 storey earth building using the cob technique in the Philippines. This building has been tested on the University of Technology of Sydney's earthquake testing facility (shake table) with outstandingly successful results.  Peter is keen to see such techniques freely spread throughout the world for the benefit of humankind. He has also overseen and built remote area housing and other buildings for Aboriginal communities within Australia. EBAA has been raising the profile of unfired earth building throughout Australia significantly, due to the efforts of Peter as President. The major EBAA submission to the Federal Government  suggesting changes to the Building Code of Australia, and particularly thermal changes needed (reported in the EBAA newsletter Dirt) was almost from the sole effort of Peter.  A volunteer EBAA delegation to Western Australia of Peter, Ray and Steve spent a week discussing ways  to ensure easier approval of thermal mass walls, particularly rammed earth walls. He is currently highly engaged and focused on getting easier approvals for unfired earth buildings through the Building Code of Australia. Particularly so from a thermal perspective wherein Peter firmly believes that the factual desirable thermal properties of unfired earth high thermal mass walls are not given sufficient credit.
	Angel Benson Passive Solar Design, Bushfires and Earth Building Angel is an Architect from Mexico now working in Australia, focusing on the creation concerned with social and environmental responsibility. He has a Bachelor Degree in Architecture and Major in Urban Design, by the University of Baja California, in Mexico. He is currently working in Australia for PEASE & BENSON, passive solar architectural design, designing residences to build in bush fire prone areas.
	Daryl Taylor Daryl has recently returned from participating in a Disaster Rebuilding Study Tour of the USA, he presented photographs, principles and plans collected on his inspiring trip.  Daryl is director of integralevolution - a personal, team, organisational and community development coaching consultancy. He and his partner Lucy and daughter Maggie, have their home in Kinglake Victoria, and survived the Black Saturday firestorm. While away, he visited the Green Building Centre in New Orleans run by Green Cross US, further to his work with Green Cross Australia in fire-impacted areas. Daryl visited the remarkable 1,100 year old Pueblo - Native American adobe settlement at Taos in New Mexico, a site testament to the resilience of earth building. The neighbourhood character of the city of Taos is dominated by adobe buildings, displaying in our time the respect, amenity and marketability of this traditional architecture and slow building approach.  While in Taos, he visited Michael Reynold's brand new Phoenix Earthship and Biotechture Centre and village, now with 90 completed Earthships. Michael and his Earthship team are travelling to Kinglake, Australia in February 2011 to work with 30 volunteers to build Australia's first fire-resilient Earthship in Kinglake, on Daryl’s property. Daryl completed the trip visiting community action groups in and around San Francisco - including Bill McKibben re 350.org, Richard Heinberg's Post-Carbon Institute, Paul Hawken's WiserEarth, and the Californian Institute for Integral Studies - Integral Ecology unit.
	Dean Farago Dean is an Earth Render Specialist he will speak of traditional surface treatments in the Middle East and alternative options for industry, a feast of finishes, many thousands of years old, using clay, lime or Roman cement. Dean is originally from Israel and practices in Australia using ancient techniques that are alternatives to, and in many ways superior to, Ordinary Portland Cement. We learn 't of plaster and casting mixes, from Biblical times, with some properties vastly superior to conventional concrete and which are cement free and which have much lower embodied energy. Fly ash is one ingredient used in some mixes and it is absent from others. He talked about his suite of ancient castable products known from history as "Charoset".
	Rob Freeland Rob is the owner and CEO of Amcer Pty Ltd. Located at 96 Mine Rd, Nutfield.  This is the venue for the Sunday workshops at this EBAA Conference on 19/9/10. The property is both expansive and beautiful. Operations routinely conducted there include leading edge Research and Development into building with unfired earth together with the development and manufacture of pressed earth brick ( and other) production machinery and the production and sale of pressed earth bricks, and sometimes puddled mud bricks. Rob is a long time member of the Earth Building Association of Australia and is currently serving as an Executive Committee Member of EBAA. He has thus served for many years. Amcer Pty Ltd, led by Rob has been manufacturing equipment for the effective production of pressed earth bricks for many years. Additionally they have manufactured, and continue to manufacture enormous numbers of pressed earth bricks for the Australian market. Rob personally investigated the building outcomes ( fire survival rates ) of various buildings and building types in the Black Saturday fires that swept parts of Victoria . These catastrophic fires only narrowly missed engulfing his own property...he was saved by a windshift, with the inferno some 8 minutes away!  The Amcer report that Rob wrote of some 300 pages systematically chronicled all building types and found fault with all except for buildings made of unfired earth. The report was submitted to the Bushfire Royal Commission. The Bushfire Code AS 3959-2009 now approves "mud brick" for  building in all areas including the highest level of FZ, being the Flame Zone. Rob is actively manufacturing earth brick presses for sale around Australia and overseas.  Additionally he manufactures unstabilised (zero cement content) pressed earth bricks for sale around Australia. Rob provides major research and input into the design and construction of bushfire resistant and non bushfire area earth brick homes and commercial buildings throughout Australia and overseas. We visited this remarkable facility on the outskirts of Melbourne as the EBAA Sunday conference venue. It is truly unique in Australia.
"There were an impressive range of speakers and it was a truly action packed weekend!! Back to the top

 

 EBAA Conference 2010 Workshops, 96 Mine Rd Nutfield Vic.

Sunday 19th September

James Henderson of Henderson Clayworks James took us on a voyage of discovery in clay and straw.  Starting with the basics of mixing Cob, Mud Brick, Light Earth and Straw Clay, James discussed the thermal properties and installation methods of each.  Participant's were face to face with the action.  He procesed and blended clay sub soils to create the different wall systems including earth render creation and application.  The three basic earth render mixes of straw-clay, sand-clay and finish render were demonstrated. James Henderson is a Melbourne boy who found himself at University in Bendigo in the early 90’s.  An environmental bent lead to a degree in Outdoor Education.  Living for five years in Bendigo fostered a love of vegetable gardens and earth buildings.  Being surrounded by central Victorian muddies and being so geographically close to Permacultures co-founder David Holmgren set his path. More...

AMCER - Pressed Earth Brick Production and Testing. Rob Freeland took us on a tour of his impressive set-up. We saw a new model of compact plant under construction in his resourceful manufacturing facility. We heard of the sensitivities of working with clay and witnessed the machine in operation.

There are Continuing Professional Development Points available for people who attended this conference.
This conference was professional development and as such can be counted toward that for architects, engineers and builders who are required to obtain continuing professional development.

Please contact EBAA for appropriate certificates of attendance.

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