More than a million acres are up for sale in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Two large paper companies are selling vast tracts of land. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports, it’s a trend that’s occurring throughout the country. And residents are worried that the land will be split up and developed:
Transcript
More than a million acres are up for sale in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Two large paper companies are selling vast tracts of land. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports, it’s a trend that’s occurring throughout the region. And residents are worried that will be split up and developed:
Escanaba Timber and International Paper have put more than one-point-one million acres of forestland in the Upper Peninsula on the market.
Paul DeLong is the chief forester for the state of Wisconsin. He says many timber companies across the nation are finding it’s more profitable to sell their land as real estate than maintain it for lumber. DeLong says environmentalists, state governments and timber companies are increasingly joining forces to preserve large tracts of forestland.
“So we’re seeing this convergence of interest from across the political spectrum, recognizing that maintaining larger blocks of forestland as working forests can be a real win-win from an ecological and economic and social standpoint.”
The Michigan Nature Conservancy plans to work closely with Governor Jennifer Granholm to create a conservation easement on the property when it’s sold.
Hurricane Katrina may be able to do what years of squabbling, negotiations and trade panel rulings have failed to do…lift the duties on imports of Canadian softwood lumber to the U.S. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dan Karpenchuk explains:
Transcript
Hurricane Katrina may be able to do what years of squabbling, negotiations, and trade panel rulings have failed to do: lift the duties on imports of Canadian softwood lumber to the U.S. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dan Karpenchuk explains:
There are concerns in the U.S. that the huge job of rebuilding New Orleans in the wake of the hurricane could lead to spikes in the cost of construction materials.
The U.S. Treasury Department says it will monitor the situation, and if it’s in the best public interest, then it could drop the tariffs on Canadian lumber. Jamie Lim is with the Ontario Forest Industries Association. Lim says it would be the best move for all.
“Katrina was a natural disaster, but the illegal tariffs that have been put on lumber over the last twenty years is a man-made disaster, and it’s U.S. consumers who’ve been paying the price.”
Canada provides up to a third of the softwood lumber used in construction in the U.S., but for the past four years, Canadian producers have been paying more than twenty-five percent in tariffs and punitive duties.
That’s estimated to have increased the average cost of a house by about a thousand dollars.
One man's junk could be another man's organic groceries or building material. (Photo by Andrew Purtell)
A group of activists has found a way to live almost entirely off the stuff other people throw away. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Amy Coombs finds one person’s trash is another’s ethical lifestyle:
Transcript
A group of activists has found a way to live almost entirely off the stuff other people throw away. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Amy Coombs finds, one person’s trash is another’s ethical lifestyle:
(Sound of dumpster opening and rummaging)
“Cheesy bread, it’s kind of nice heated up… Some people love this crap.”
Jean C. has been dumpster diving for eight years and no longer considers it a chore.
“Dumpster diving can be a spiritual endeavor if you happen to believe it’s a sin to throw away food.”
C. is an activist. She’s also an accountant and is by no means homeless. She says she dumpster dives for food, clothing, office supplies, and building materials because she can’t bring herself to support wasteful manufacturers.
“The point of the dumpster diving lifestyle is to reclaim the waste of consumerist society.”
After dumpster diving in four major metropolitan areas, C. says you would be amazed by how much perfectly good stuff society throws away. If you do your homework, she says you can find almost anything you want.
“We’ve found organic cherries and chocolate and organic tofu, organic tofu burgers, chocolate soymilk, once we even found a whole case of white wine.”
Probably not too surprisingly, health officials say the lifestyle raises some sanitation concerns. Jerry LeMoine is a Food Inspector at the Santa Cruz County, California Health Department. He says even if dumpster-divers go for high-quality organic foods, taking food from a dumpster is risky.
“Potentially any type of bacteria could grow in a dumpster. Flies can get into dumpsters, rats, other types rodents, disease vectors, so it’s just unknown as to what the conditions are there and conditions might change at any moment in a dumpster.”
Dumpster divers say they’re aware of the risks, but Jean C. says she exercises great discretion. She says wading knee deep through other people’s trash is no worse than grocery shopping, as long as you know what to look for.
“We never eat unsanitary or dirty food. We only take meats if they’re frozen or vacuum sealed. Once we found a whole dumpster full of smoked salmon that was not going to go bad for years – and that was good. Everybody ate it.”
Lee Turner,a long-time dumpster diver, says people throw things away because Americans are wasteful. Turner has spent the past thirty years troubleshooting ways to build gadgets from others’ trash. He’s even built a back woods cabin entirely from salvaged materials.
(Sound of crickets)
“Welcome to my home… This is the kitchen, spice rack, this is the food cabinet, got running water, there’s a rain barrel, see…”
(Sound of water)
Turner built his shack illegally in a public forest, but he says he’s always been careful not to hurt the surrounding environment. He considers dumpster-diving to be part of a larger love for Nature.
Turner says using material that’s headed for the landfill makes a lot more sense than buying wood and encouraging the lumber and timber industry to cut down more trees.
“Most of the materials are found materials. Some of the wood came out of dumpsters.”
Turner and C. have turned dumpster-diving into an organized effort. They target the highest quality products, they stake out factory dumpsters to learn when mislabeled items are routinely tossed, and look for store employees willing to leak information about the next scheduled inventory reduction. It’s a conspiracy to salvage.
“What happens in a dumpster-diving collective is that you need to get a small group of quiet people, hopefully, and have them take a large amount of food back to a central location, where you’re going to wash it and process it and redistribute it, so that everyone gets what they need.”
It’s impossible to know how many students, activists, and old nature lovers scour garbage cans, but dumpster-diving is becoming an increasingly popular sport. And despite the social inhibitions and threat of food contamination, activists such as Turner and C. say they won’t abandon their search for edible, usable and fixable refuse any time soon.
Due to a blight, American chestnuts are now rare in the Midwest. (Photo courtesy of the National Park Service)
In the first half of the last century, there were millions of American chestnut trees ranging from the Eastern seaboard to the Upper Midwest. Now, there are virtually none… because a fungus killed them. A campaign is being launched to bring back a blight-resistant version of the chestnut… and it’s being planted here in the Midwest. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Cohen
reports:
Transcript
In the first half of the last century, there were millions of
American chestnut trees ranging from the Eastern seaboard to the Upper
Midwest. Now, there are virtually none because a fungus killed them.
A campaign is being launched to bring back a blight-resistant version of
the chestnut, and it’s being planted here in the Midwest. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Cohen reports:
Sprouts from diseased chestnut trees don’t get the killer fungus until
they’re 4 inches tall, so researchers like Brian McCarthy of Ohio
University have had plenty of raw material to breed a new version of the
chestnut tree.
“Fifteen-sixteenths pure American chestnut and one-sixteenth Chinese
chestnut. And that one-sixteenth of the genome confers blight resistance.”
Ohio is now planting hundreds of the new seedlings on top of abandoned strip
mines. McCarthy believes they may help reclaim the land.
“It’s not that chestnuts like this kind of soil. It’s that probably that chestnuts can
tolerate this type of soil better than other broadleaf tree species can.”
McCarthy hopes that a century from now, the blight-resistant chestnut
trees will once again be prominent in forests, providing high-quality
lumber and food for wildlife.
"Green" single family homes built by GreenBuilt in the Cleveland EcoVillage. (Photo courtesy of Cleveland EcoVillage)
Kids entertained by a stiltwalker at the ribbon cutting for the W. 58th St. EcoVillage Townhomes, which are built to be more energy-efficient. (Photo courtesy of Cleveland EcoVillage)
Planting beds being prepared by neighborhood residents at the EcoVillage Community Garden on Ithaca Ct. (Photo courtesy of Cleveland EcoVillage)
In recent decades, rust-belt cities have seen neighborhoods deteriorate and surrounding suburbs sprawl with little restraint. Now, formerly industrial cities are looking to redevelop old neighborhoods and attract new people. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lisa Ann Pinkerton looks at how one old neighborhood is using sustainable ideas to attract new residents:
Transcript
In recent decades, rust-belt cities have seen neighborhoods deteriorate and surrounding suburbs sprawl with little restraint. Now, formerly industrial cities are looking to redevelop old neighborhoods and attract new people. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lisa Ann Pinkerton looks at how one old neighborhood is using sustainable ideas to attract new residents:
(sound of street)
The morning sun is peaking through an overcast sky along a street lined with simple Victorian style homes. In this Cleveland neighborhood, two of these homes are brand new. Unlike their century old neighbors, they’re green buildings… built with the environment in mind.
One, is the home of David and Jen Hovus. It was built to actively conserve resources and to have a low impact on the environment. For example, all of the lights are on timers.
“I had to go out of my way to find timers that would control compact fluorescent lights, so that I wasn’t wasting too much electricity.”
Even the fan venting moist air from the bathroom… is on a timer. The furnace too, is a high-efficiency unit.
(sound of walking)
Hovus’s environmentally friendly surroundings don’t stop at the backyard gate. He lives in a special neighborhood called the Cleveland EcoVillage. And on his way to work, he sees green building principles and sustainable practices all along the way. Like the community garden, where even the tool shed is made of recycled material.
“There was a 120-year-old maple tree that was cut down. Folks brought a portable saw mill and they sawed it into lumber and that’s what they used for the framing. It’s actually a strawbale construction as well.”
The idea to revive a struggling neighborhood with sustainable solutions, started with the city’s environmental planning organization, EcoCity Cleveland. Back in 1997, they investigated dozens of the cities neighborhoods. And choose the west side neighborhood where Hovus lives, because it was close to transit, had a strong Community Development organization and had support of the local councilman.
David Beach is EcoCity Cleveland’s Executive Director. He says besides environmentally sound buildings, the neighborhood gives the option of a car-free life.
“Where everything you need is with in walking distance. So you’re living space, your work place, and some of your shopping can be right in that one neighborhood. And then you hop on that rapid transit and in five minutes your downtown or you’re at the airport.”
Everything within a half-mile radius of the transit station is in the EcoVillage.
Resident David Hovus stands at the entrance, with fierce wind coming off of Lake Erie.
“This used to be… there was literally a set of stairs leading down to the platform. There was essentially a bus shelter on the platform and that was it. And if you didn’t actually know where the entrances were, you’d never know there was a train station here.”
So EcoCity Cleveland and the neighborhood convinced Cleveland’s Transit Authority to spend nearly $4 and a half million dollars on a new station, based on environmentally sound principles. It’s the only Green Transit Station in Ohio.
“And now we’d got a nice warm building that uses passive solar heating and a lot of green building features.”
Mandy Metcalf is the EcoVillage Project Director. She continues our tour of the neighborhood down a walking path.
Four blocks later, twenty new green-built town homes come into view. In the same simple Victorian style of the neighborhood, they blend right in. They’re also very energy efficient.
“One resident said that his January bill was only forty dollars for gas, which is pretty impressive.”
But, the majority of the homes in the EcoVillage are more than a century old and very energy inefficient. While they’re considered “affordable housing,” a mortgage payment on top of a heating bill of more than $300 dollars makes them difficult to afford. So Metcalf’s organization helped homeowners discover where their energy was being wasted.
“What the best things, the most cost effective things that they could do to retrofit their houses. And now we’re going to match them up with loan programs and encourage them to go through with it.”
While older homes are being updated, the Ecovillage is making plans to improve the green space surrounding the local rec center. And within two years, they hope to entice a green building grocery store to the area.
David Peterson is president of NaturNorth Technologies. The business is a spinoff from the University of Minnesota-Duluth's Natural Resources Research Institute. It has a patent on a process to extract large quantities of pure betulin, a component of birch bark. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)
When extracted and purified, betulin is a crystalline powder. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)
Skip Sandman is a traditional healer for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. He says it's getting harder and harder to find mature birch trees for his medicines. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)
A start-up company is banking on birch bark. The papery bark can be used for more than baskets and canoes. It’s used in skin creams, and scientists are studying it for use in treating skin rashes and even cancer. But Native American healers have been using birch bark for years, and some of them are worried about the supply. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:
Transcript
A start-up company is banking on birch bark. The papery bark can be used for more than baskets and canoes. It’s used in skin creams, and scientists are studying it for use in treating skin rashes and even cancer. But Native American healers have been using birch bark for years, and some of them are worried about the supply. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:
Have you ever noticed – walking in the woods – those cylinders of bright white bark, lying on the forest floor? Those are the remains of a birch tree. The inside of the tree rots away quickly, but the bark lasts much longer.
“The birch tree has some incredible defense mechanisms that protect the tree from weather, from rain, from sun, keep the moisture in, keep moisture out.”
David Peterson knows birch trees pretty well. He was a top manager at the Potlatch Paper Mill near Duluth, Minnesota. The plant processes thousands of trees every day, and burns the bark to make steam.
“I always was interested in trying to come with a way of using some of these low value waste streams generated from pulp paper mills and other places, it seemed like such a horrible waste, to take these really interesting compounds and put them in a boiler for boiler fuel.”
Peterson’s new company, NaturNorth Technologies, plans to make something worth a lot more than boiler fuel. The company has patented a process to extract large quantities of a chemical, betulin, that gives birch bark its anti-bacterial and anti-fungal qualities.
Mill workers remove bark from a tree that’s harvested for lumber or paper-making. It’s shredded into pellets, and put through a chemical process that extracts the betulin. It ends up looking something like salt.
“Here’s a sample of betulin, and you can see how bright and white it is. It’s got a chalky feel when you touch it.”
Apparently, what birch bark does for the birch tree, it can also do for human skin – protect it from the assaults of the physical world. Betulin is already used in some creams and cosmetics, but NaturNorth plans to be the first company in the world to market it on a large scale.
The idea of selling lots of betulin from birch bark makes Skip Sandman nervous. He’s a Native American traditional healer for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. He uses birch bark for medicine. He says it’s a pain-killer and blood-thinner and can be used for intestinal disorders.
“Fortunately, when people use it for medicines and stuff, one small tree does go a long way. But you might have to travel 15, 20 miles to find the right type of tree.”
Sandman says the bigger trees – ten to twelve inches in diameter – have a bigger supply of the properties he uses in medicine. And lately he’s had to go farther to find those big trees. He says that’s because timber companies have cut down so many of the big trees and now they’re working on smaller and smaller trees.
“But you see the logging trucks go by, and they’re just whacking down everything. Well they think it’s only a tree. But when the trees are gone, then what do we do?”
Sandman says in the Ojibwe creation story, each plant and animal promised to help people in some way, and birch trees offered their healing qualities. He says it’s important to use them respectfully, and not for profit, but only to help people. He says he approaches the tree with an offering of tobacco.
“I will put tobacco down and ask and talk to that tree, because it is alive.”
The folks at NaturNorth are hoping to make money from birch trees, but they’re also excited about helping people. David Peterson says he gets letters from people who want some betulin to treat a skin condition.
“When you get those letters, you can’t help but to feel that somebody out there that’s gonna benefit eventually from these compounds, I think it’s quite sobering and humbling.”
NaturNorth has started marketing betulin to cosmetics companies, and scientists are studying betulinic acid for its disease-fighting potential. Peterson says it’ll be several years before NaturNorth generates a profit.
From lighter, thinner ski boots and other cold-weather clothing...
(Photo by Adam Fowler)
... to using less lumber in home-building, aerogels are reported to have a multitude of uses. (Photo by Bartlomiej Stroinski)
A new insulating material could cut down on home heating
costs and save on materials in construction. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Katherine Glover tells us about Aerogels:
Transcript
A new insulating material could cut down on home heating costs and save
on construction materials. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Katherine Glover
tells us about Aerogels:
Aerogels look like frozen smoke, and feel like styrofoam. Up to ninety-nine
percent of an aerogel is empty space. This makes it an excellent insulator. Last
year, the first aerogel jacket hit the market. And aerogel footwear inserts are used
by the U.S. military and the Canadian National Ski
Team. Ed Hogan is the marketing manager of Aspen Aerogels.
“Everybody knows how much cold feet can spoil an outing, right? And this stuff
is so thin, you can put it in a shoe or put it in a boot, and you hardly notice it.”
Because they’re new, aerogels are still expensive relative to other materials. The
company says once they gain in popularity and the price goes down, they could be used
as insulation in walls and the clear form could be used in windows. This could cut down
dramatically on heating costs. And, because aerogels are so thin, the company says
houses could be built with less lumber. That’s because less lumber would be needed
to make room for aerogel insulation.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Katherine Glover.
In springtime, many homeowners’ thoughts turn to home improvement projects. That typically means a hit in the wallet, and for some, guilty feelings about consuming too much. Most do-it- yourselfers saw up a lot of trees in the lumber they use. And they use other materials that affect the environment. But there are ways to keep more green in your pocket, and boost your green conscience. As part of an ongoing series called “Your Choice; Your Planet,” the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Cari Noga reports:
Transcript
In springtime, many homeowners’ thoughts turn to home improvement projects. That
typically means a hit in the wallet, and for some, guilty feelings over consuming too
much. Most do-it-yourselfers saw up a lot of trees in the lumber they use. And they use
other materials that affect the environment. But there are ways to keep more green in
your pocket, as well as a green conscience. As part of an ongoing series called “Your Choice; Your Planet,” the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Cari
Noga reports:
If you’ve ever sat in a high school gym, you’ll likely get a sense of déjà vu when you
walk into John Patterson’s home. That’s because in its former life, the house’s flooring
was high school bleachers. Cleaning them up was a chore. Patterson says he and his
wife filled up a five-gallon bucket removing the gum wads from the 20-foot yellow pine
planks. But Patterson says the work was worth it…
“What I like about them the best is the wood is so old, because they were in the school
for like 40 years. I hope they stay here for 40 years. You can’t replace them, or regrow
trees this long and tall. It’s something I’m really proud of doing.”
The floor is just one part of the couple’s overhaul of their home. Two summers ago they
stripped the tiny ranch-style home down to the studs. They nearly doubled the square
footage, and added a second floor. The windows, siding and even the 2 by 4s, are reused
or recycled.
A growing number of homeowners are combining a do-it-yourself attitude with an
environmental ethic. Instead of shopping at big box chain stores, they go to auctions and
used building material stores. They buy everything from bathtubs to doors to, yes, even
the kitchen sink. Patterson’s wife Sarah Goss is the scavenger, scouting out the stuff for
him to install. For her, reuse has been a lifelong value.
“I think it’s upbringing. You just grow up feeling a little guilt if you overuse your
resources…any way you can conserve or be a part of that, I feel like it’s an added plus.”
They’re not the only ones who think this way. Kurt Buss is president of the Used
Building Materials Association. He says the reuse movement is spreading as
communities nationwide try to reduce landfill volume. Up to 40 percent of landfill space
is construction debris.
“You don’t throw away newspapers and tin cans. You shouldn’t throw away your house.”
Buss says reused materials can be better quality, too.
“More often than not the wood is old growth lumber, which is certainly preferable to
much of the lumber that you see in lumber stores today which is speed grown on tree
farms… So there’s premium materials that are available with environmental benefits
attached.”
So, reused materials are often higher quality, and go easy on the environment.
They also cost a lot less – typically half of what the same item would cost new.
Still, not everyone’s sold immediately. There’s a lot of sweat equity that offsets the cost
advantage. John Patterson and Sarah Goss worked a long time scraping off all that
bubble gum.
Then there’s getting over the fact that most of the stuff is someone else’s discarded
material… their trash.
Bruce Odom owns the Michigan store where Patterson and Goss found many of their
materials. He says many shoppers walk in skeptics, but become believers.
“You see a lot of one party tugging the other one along, and the other one saying, ‘No,
no, I don’t know about this,’ whether it be the husband or the wife. You see a lot of that.
And yeah, you do need to realize that it’s all done and installed, you probably aren’t
going to recognize the difference except in your checkbook.”
If you’re making a list of things to do around the house, you can find reused materials
stores in at least 30 states. A visit to one might deconstruct the perception that newer is
better.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Cari Noga.
Loggers at the turn of the last century direct their harvest down the Rum River. (Photo courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society)
At the turn of the last century, lumberjacks throughout the northern U.S. and Canada sent millions of logs downriver. Many were destined for ships headed to Great Britain. But about ten percent of the logs sank along the way. In recent years, some of that old wood has been retrieved and sold on the market. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports on a pair of cabinetmakers who are using it to recapture a part of history:
Transcript
At the turn of the last century, lumberjacks throughout the northern U.S. and Canada sent
millions of logs downriver. Many were destined for ships headed to Great Britain. But
about ten percent of the logs sank along the way. In recent years, some of that old wood
has been retrieved and sold on the market. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen
Kelly reports on a pair of cabinetmakers who are using it to recapture a part of history:
(drilling)
Dave Sharpe balances a cupboard door against its frame as his brother Andy secures it with
a screw.
They’re installing cabinets in a cottage tucked into the woods of Quebec.
The cabinets are made from century-old pine logs that Dave says were pulled from the
bottom of the Ottawa River.
“I think it’s unbelievable when you think that we’re working with wood that was destined to
go to England like maybe 150 years ago. I always wonder what these old guys that cut the
logs would think if they knew it was 2003 and here we are installing a kitchen in Quebec
with the lumber that they cut. They’d probably think we were crazy for bringing it back
up.”
(pounding)
But for Dave and Andy Sharpe, this wood is a source of inspiration. They design and build
cabinets and furniture in the small town of Havelock, Ontario. They prefer this lumber
because it’s 20 percent denser and heavier than commercial pine. That’s because the logs
came from forests that had never been harvested before.
Plus, the colors are unique. The lumber has spent decades lying on the bottom of the river.
There, it was exposed to minerals that left streaks of red, yellow and blue. Mostly, the
wood has the look of a marble cake. There are stark contrasts between lights and darks.
Andy says the reclaimed lumber has changed the way he approaches his work.
“Sometimes you’ll find a unique board and you’ll set that board aside because you know it
would make a neat board in a table or something. The other thing, you tend to use more
hand tools on this wood than what you do the commercial pine. You just feel, you want to
feel the wood.”
(planing)
Andy slides a hand planer along the edge of a door.
Tiny curls of wood fall into a pile as he carefully molds the door to the frame.
While Andy and Dave love the feel of the wood, and the color, they say what really
inspires them is the story behind it.
At the turn of the last century, about two thirds of men in the Ottawa area worked in the
lumber industry. They spent the winter in rough cabins, cutting down trees and piling them
on the ice. Come spring, they’d ride the logs downriver.
Dave says those men are always present to him while he’s working.
“I can’t pick up a piece of it where I don’t think of the old days and the men that lived on
the rivers while they were driving the logs and lost their lives. Really, it fascinates me and I
think that I feel closer to them. I feel like I’m a part of that chain. I feel kind of like the
end of the log boom in Canada.
(brothers talking)
That passion influences customers too.
Will Lockhart hired the Sharpes to renovate the kitchen in his cabin.
The cabin’s an important part of his family’s history.
But he wanted it to represent the history of the region as well.
“Today, a lot of people don’t know about the logging days and it used to be, as Dave and
Andy mentioned, such an important part of this part of the world. I mean, everybody was
involved in it. The rivers were full of logs and we don’t know that anymore.”
(sound)
Dave Sharpe says, when he builds a piece of furniture, he imagines someone passing it on
to their grandchildren.
And telling them the story of Canada’s lumberjacks.
It’s estimated that the supply of reclaimed wood will be exhausted within 40 years.
Dave and Andy Sharpe plan to devote that time to preserving it in their furniture – leaving
behind a tangible piece of history.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.
The cost of building a home is soaring. Materials are expensive, and skilled labor is scarce. The high costs are contributing to a crisis in affordable housing, in the Great Lakes region and around the country. A new technology from Japan could be part of the solution. The structural pieces of a custom-designed home are cut out in a factory, using wood manufactured from small-diameter trees. Even unskilled workers can assemble the house on site in about a day. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill watched a home as it was being built:
Transcript
The cost of building a home is soaring. Materials are expensive, and skilled labor is scarce. The high costs are contributing to a crisis in affordable housing, in the Great Lakes region and around the country. A new technology from Japan could be part of the solution. The structural pieces of a custom-designed home are cut out in a factory, using wood manufactured from small-diameter trees. Even unskilled workers can assemble the house on site in about a day. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill watched a home going up:
Five East 5th Street is a narrow lot a few blocks above downtown in Duluth, Minnesota. A new basement juts out of a hole in the hillside. From the front yard, there’s a spectacular view of Lake Superior.
Most of the houses in this neighborhood are at least 80 years old. They’re small houses built for working families. A few vacant lots show where dilapidated houses were torn down.
One day last month, the new house arrived on a truck.
(sound of Martin listing parts)
Santos Martin works for Kato Sangyo, the Japanese company that invented this system of homebuilding. He calls out the part numbers as half a dozen apprentice carpenters carry the pieces off the truck. Soon the lot is covered with stacks of house parts – corner posts sixteen feet long, and insulated wall panels in various sizes, as big as 4 feet by 9 feet.
Then the workers start to put the pieces together.
“Every component is numbered, every component has a specific place and an internal metal connector that allows you to put it together like you would a TV entertainment center or a bed frame.”
James Brew is the architect who had the dream for this house.
Brew was fascinated by Japanese culture since he was a kid. He’s traveled to Japan several times, and hosted exchange students in his home. Two years ago he learned about a Japanese company that created a home-building system that allows even inexperienced workers to frame up a custom-designed house in a day,
“People who haven’t built with this system, there they are pounding together a beam and a post and with a little bit of weather cooperation they will probably have this entire house framed today.”
The beams are made of laminated strand lumber. Instead of cutting big trees into 2 by 4s, laminated strand lumber uses smaller trees and even waste wood, glued together like plywood.
This type of “engineered wood” is being used more and more in homebuilding. What sets the Kato Sangyo system apart is the way the framing pieces are locked together with metal connectors.
The beams for this house are four inches square, and either eight or sixteen feet long. At the end of each beam there’s a slot for a metal connector. It’s like a large hinge. Workers slide one end of the hinge into the beam, and match the other end to a slot in the floor.
Then they raise the beam until it’s standing upright. They slide the insulated wall panels into the spaces between the beams. Everything is supposed to fit precisely because it was cut to order in a factory. Once the framing is up, workers will add siding, and the house will look just like the other ones on the block.
The assembly is mostly a matter of matching the right parts. So it’s an ideal project for people who are just learning how to build. Lisa Lyons is one of the crew members. She and her co-workers are part of a job training program for battered women. After a year of learning standard construction techniques, Lyons says this job is fun.
“Before it’s a lot of framing, a lot of measuring, and this here you just pound in some pegs and stand it up and it’s just like lego blocks, it’s really cool.”
The Japanese system offers not only speedy construction, but the potential for more affordable housing. The parts for this house were made at a factory in Minnesota. They were cut by hand, which took a couple of days. Architect James Brew says they could be cut in a couple of hours in a fully automated factory.
As the house takes shape, visitors stop by to watch. They include businesses thinking about the Japanese system as a possible new industry for Minnesota. James Brew says it would cost about a million dollars to buy the equipment to make the house parts. And he’s talked with a lot of lumber and construction firms that are intrigued with the idea.
“So there’s many interests in the system and the idea, the technology, but it’s again chicken and egg. Which is first, sales without a factory, or factory with no sales, or together. It’s very difficult.”
Brew is hoping the house in Duluth will provide the demo that will spur some business to decide there’s a future for the Japanese system in the United States. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Stephanie Hemphill in Duluth.
