December Events Cancelled

Posted by mike on Nov 30, 2011 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

We apologize to everyone who had planned on attending these events.  We will be rescheduling for later in 2012.  We will announce the new dates as soon as they are confirmed.

Upcoming Courses

Posted by mike on Oct 24, 2011 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

Urban Permaculture Design Certification 

Reclaimed Frame

 5 Day Straw Bale Building Intensive

May 23 – June 1, 2012 – Urban Permaculture Design Certification!

Posted by mike on Oct 24, 2011 in Courses | 1 comment

Permaculture Design Work and Certification:
This is a standard 72 hour Permaculture certification course. This course will run from 9 am – 5 pm, consecutively, from May 23 to June 1.  This courses meets all requirements for certification. Participants attending all sessions of this class and completing the required assignments will receive a Certificate of Permaculture Design conferred by the Eastern PA Permaculture Guild teachers. (Special assignments may be created to allow students to make up missed course time in the event of an emergency. The basic mandate of 72 hours is still required for certification).

Nov 19, 2011 – Reclaimed Frame: Construct a picture or mirror frame with local reclaimed wood.

Posted by mike on Oct 22, 2011 in Courses | 0 comments

NOV 19, 2011 – RECLAIMED FRAME:  Construct a picture or mirror frame with local reclaimed wood. 

Time: 10:30 – 12:30

Instructor: Jason Allen Pemberton a.k.a the “Reclaimed Guru”

Class: The Reclaimed Frame:  Construct a picture or mirror frame with local reclaimed wood.

Cost $100

Material Included

Do you dislike having to use the generic run of the mill big box frames to highlight your special moments?  Well we have just the class for you.  Join the “Reclaimed Guru” for a day of exploring the possibilities of reclaimed wood by creating your own personal reclaimed picture or mirror frame.

During this class each student will learn the secrets to selecting the right salvaged material and how to employ unique joinery techniques to create a personalized frame.

Demonstration:

The Guru will construct examples of the different types of frames possible from start to finish while highlighting various joinery tools and finishing techniques.

Selecting stock:

Identify the qualities of good/ bad salvaged wood?

Design:

Size does matter.  Frame parameters 15” x 18” max 8” x 10” min

How does the treatment of the frame material relate to your personal project?

What type of Joinery works best?

Fabrication:

Create a Cut sheet

Jointer straight edge

Table saw cuts to width

Planer removes material. To thickness

Chop saw cut to length

Router to create profile

Pre sand all components

Assembly

Dry fit

Sand

Check and clean joinery

Check for square

Final sand and finish

Final assembly

* Price does not include matting or glass or mirror

Dec 5-9, 2011 – 5 Day Straw Bale Intensive Workshop!!

Posted by mike on Sep 26, 2011 in Courses, Featured | 0 comments

DECEMBER 5-9, 2011

WINTER INDOOR STRAW BALE/NATURAL BUILDING INTENSIVE

Course Description:

The Straw Bale Intensive Workshop will focus on energy efficient, climate-specific, straw bale design and construction. In this exciting 5 day course, students will be immersed in natural building through hands-on experience, class and site presentations, in-depth, comprehensive lectures, and group discussion.  Students will participate in building a small-scale straw bale structure and learn specific building details, such as resizing and shaping bales, working with straw-clay, door and window details, wall to roof connections, air sealing, framing options, plastering, and much more. In addition to learning about straw bale construction, other topics will be discussed through lecture such as other natural wall systems, clay and lime plasters, building-site relationships, and social and cultural contexts.

This course will run from Monday December 5th  through Friday December 9th.  There will be two evening lectures in addition to the regular hours of the workshop.  The topics of the evening lectures are ´Building Science for Natural Building´and ´Natural Building: Design Detailing for Cold and Moderate Climates´.  The workshop will end with a Friday evening celebration and an opening to the public, to display the structure that was built during the course.

This course will be held indoors at

The ReVerse/Stock Group/Philadelphia Salvage Warehouse                                                                                                              

542 Carpenter Lane, Philadelphia, PA across from Weaver’s Way Coop

Register Here For The Straw Bale Building Intensive!

Cost for five day course:

$875

*If you do not have a google email account, you can mail a check and email us to notify that you are signing up

Mail Checks to

ReVerse

542 Carpenter Ln

Philadelphia, PA 19119

Make Checks Payable to: ReVerse

Instructors

We are very excited to have two of the most qualified instructors in the field, Ace McArleton and Jacob Deva Racusin, of New Frameworks Natural Building (NewFrameworks.com), to be leading the course throughout the week.

Below is an image gallery of New Frameworks work:

About the Instructors

Jacob Deva Racusin:
Jacob Deva Racusin has been creating functional art with wood, stone, straw, earth, and other assorted materials since 2000.  Through contracting, consultation, teaching, and lots of tinkering, he explores particular interests in cold-climate strawbale construction, natural painting and plastering, bioregional design and construction, and the integration between buildings and their environments.

Ace McArleton:
Ace McArleton is a practicing natural builder/contractor who lives in Central Vermont. Ace has led workshops and taught classes locally and nationally on natural building, and also on issues of gender and sexuality and access to the building trades, with both youth and adults. Ace is a member of the Natural Builders Northeast and the Timber Framers Guild.

Strawbale buildings — low tech, high performance

Posted by mike on Sep 26, 2011 in Press | 0 comments

Original article can be found HERE

From the Wayne Independent. Sept 21, 2011
Honesdale, Pa. —
By Josh Wengler

If you could go back in time, say 1,000 years, to explain to someone how houses are built today, do you think they would be in awe over how much better our stick-built technology is over the stone structures of the time, or would they think we were crazy for living in houses built essentially with paper and sticks?

It may be that they would think we were crazy. But what if you told them grasses were the newest craze in super — efficient, highly weather and fire resistant building technology?

As counter-intuitive as it may seem, this is exactly the case.

Strawbale buildings are beginning to be recognized around the world as fitting all the above criteria, as well as being super cost efficient, nearly impervious to earthquakes and much more environmentally friendly than most contemporary building techniques.

Now, don’t expect to start seeing headlines about high rise buildings made of strawbales, but in terms of homebuilding, strawbales may begin to rival more commonly accepted technologies as the green building craze becomes more widespread.

“One of the things I love most about strawbale building is how inclusive it is,” said Mike Balasco, founder of the ReVerse Foundation at a strawbale building forum held by SEEDS (Sustainable Energy Education and Development Support) Tuesday. “Strawbales outperform more conventional building technologies in almost every way imaginable. And they are cost effective. They can be implemented just about anywhere.”

Through designing, building, educating and being mentored by some of the best in the field, Belasco says he has developed a deep appreciation for and knowledge of the strawbale building process. In addition to designing and building in the field, he received his bachelor’s degree from Goddard College, where he spent two years strictly studying strawbale design and construction.

He has received his natural building certification from Yestermorrow Design/Build School, and has also launched an educational institution in Philadelphia, The ReVerse Foundation, dedicated to teaching the public about environmentally conscious building ideas and practices.

He says the main appeal of the technology is in the fact that it is also low-tech, making it approachable to those who might not otherwise be able to be part of the building process on their own house.

This, he says, tends to draw people in when structures of this kind are being built in their area. House-building becomes a community affair as people gather round to learn about what seems like a new and off-beat building system, but has actually been around just as long as mechanical balers, which first appeared in the late 1800s.

In fact, Balasco says there is a courthouse still in use in Arthur, Nebraska — right in the middle of tornado alley — that was built of strawbales over a century ago by prairie settlers.

Where conventional fiberglass insulation in a stud wall operates at peak performance at 45 degrees Fahrenheit and drops quickly in efficiency from there, Balasco says a wall built of strawbales remains efficient regardless of temperature and takes about 12 hours to transfer heat or cold through its thickness, as opposed to mere minutes in a fiberglass insulated wall.

Coupled with the fact that strawbales can be notched and stacked in ways that drastically reduce the number of air spaces in the wall from conventional building methods, this leads to tremendous savings in heating bills.

“Right, but it’s straw! Straw is really flammable!” Balasco said at the forum. “That’s got to be dangerous.”

Wrong, he says. And he offers proof in the form of a time lapse video from official ANSI (American National Standards Institute — the accepted testing agency for regulation of building materials) burn tests to prove it.

While individual pieces of straw will burn at the mere suggestion of flame, the ANSI video Belasco showed the 25 or so assembled Tuesday shows flames shot at a strawbale wall with a common cement/lime plaster coating continuously for two hours with little effect on it. Afterwards, the wall was blasted with a fire hose for a full two minutes and continued to maintain its integrity. Another wall covered with an earthen plaster made of clay withstood a full hour’s flame exposure with similar results.

The reason for this, Belasco explained, is that the individual pieces of straw are packed together so tightly that there’s no room for air to get between them, leaving flame little hope of doing so.

“Paper is also really flammable, right?” Belasco asked the crowd, “But did you ever try to burn a phone book? You can’t do it. It’s the same principle. There’s no air between the pages, so they won’t burn.

Citing a Department of Agriculture study that says there is enough excess straw produced in this country every year to build four million 2,000 square foot houses, Belasco says each of those buildings would keep the money required to build them in the community while producing a safer, more efficient home with less environmental impact.

The only question, he says, is why people continue to spend more money on materials produced overseas at steeper prices that cannot perform as well.
Copyright 2011 Wayne Independent. Some rights reserved

Straw Bale Building Essay/Book

Posted by mike on Sep 23, 2011 in Featured, Store | 0 comments

This essay/book is a culmination of a two year intensive study of straw bale construction.  This book is 100+ pages with full color images! The Straw Bale Building book covers in depth the following topics:

Why straw bale construction competes with, or outperforms, modern conventional building in almost every critical function buildings must deal with. Topics included in this section insulation value, fire, and much more!

A breakdown on how to build with straw bales.

Plaster prep.

Plaster choices and a couple sample ratios.

and much, much more!

Cost: $40.

Shipping & Handling included!!