It was in building the tiny house when I was a fledgling young builder I picked out my materials for a super lightweight project, less than 1,600 pounds, all, and two stories to the boot. Structural aluminum paired with steel studs and Styrofoam cut by hand from enormous blocks by me and my buddy Dan.
I’d helped my dad demo and remodel our home much prior when I was in the 9th grade, pulling off straight A’s, going to swimming practice, challenging the team’s hazing appeal to tradition which would come to a head and be put to bed on year four, then late nights to my own bed in between hours spent with the chisel painstakingly grinding away at the old house with every square inch earned painstaking to build out the new. Chiseling that underfloor or tile, chiseling the glue one little chisel at a time until all that old binding and mummified plywood finally gave up.
I remember my head would hit the pillow and I’d be out.
Inhaling the chlorine with the pneumonia-inducing perspiration exhaling the glue’s dust trying to avoid getting bloody nose the body burning at both ends, a young teenager, just trying to heal between reps and be helpful. Nasty stuff we subject our laborers and dwellers, too. No other options afforded by the ‘powers that be’.
“Active recovery,” my coach used to say when we would stretch our hands to touch the pads and be done to rest for too long if it was five seconds as with ‘hell week.’
Isn’t it the same for those who must trade their body’s for their children’s small fortune in going to college or just simply food on the table maybe a bit of money put aside for the chance of medical bills. Gasping for air.
And it was in building the tiny house when I had to pick out the new materials I realized something simple to my instincts - from the wall-designated materials that I experimentally used as the floor to save weight (read: outgassing noticed more before a throw rug) to the roofing insulation labeled ‘Berkshire Hathaway’ which is seemingly designed to take on and hold water (common sense said it shouldn’t have those properties?) - everything, and I mean everything available to me by the IBC didn’t SMELL right.
It was how I realized… building code is wrong. And it’s also poison. Poison when it’s first put in, poison when it becomes impregnated with the water, poison when the mold invariably moves right on in, a guaranteed procession. Poison for those and their occupants who try to remove. Just plain flavorless yogurt poison.
And that is the standard of care for our country since at least the time I was a boy, and probably much longer.
Asbestos did not go away, it simply changed forms. Actually I would argue that the newer building materials are worse. At least Asbestos lasted forever. You ever seen old Asbestos? It’s like a time capsule in its own preservation compared to the “new stuff” which impregnates, rots and outgasses.
Why Can’t I Just Go Home?
And while the tiny house may last a long time as my own person, being a political refugee of Colorado unable to check and see if those squatters finally finished breaking into the first Allodial home I built (almost entirely) by myself (I did have an employee at the time help me make one day into two at the last minute so I could go), and while it did survive unscathed blowing over in a wind storm that one time I didn’t put her in storm mode when parked in storage - easy to pick up when leaning against the fence - the insides being fine but especially the roof’s code-designated insulation eventually most probably logged with water there in Park County will need to be gutted one day as with most all IBC.
Not because of longevity, mind, but because I don’t need the weight and the mold perhaps in ten or twenty years hence mixing with the other various chemicals to make her top heavy in every sense with this no-common-sense standard called International Building Code. Maybe it’d be there near forever if there weren’t any man’s devices?
You ever heard about those hamburgers keeping for an eternity? Vanity of vanities. I just want us all to be free.
(storm mode)
(inside)
