Picture a group of guys sitting around a table, smoking expensive cigars and drinking Heineken, and talking about what they would build in a new green, sustainable house if they had the opportunity…and money. There’s some humor here. These guys are smoking cigars and talking about building environmentally friendly houses. Lots of ideas were bantered-about, but one guy actually, the following week, produced his plans for building an incredible house for his ‘retirement’-a home that he says could be passed-down throughout generations. A home that is entirely sustainable, as ‘green’ as it gets, and would out-last conventional homes by decades, without the usual expense of reconditioning and remodeling. We didn’t believe him…at first.
Rammed-earth
At first I thought this was a joke, but it is real. This guy is going to build a ‘rammed-earth’ home. It’s going to be more expensive than the conventional home initially, but the savings will come later. He calls it his ‘forever generation of families home’ that will last well past his demise, and one that his family will never sell. Needless to say, he got our attention.
Rammed-earth homes-or buildings-aren’t new. They have been around for hundreds of years, having been used in Europe, south America, and in the arid areas of the U.S., including California, Montana, Idaho, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington. In essence, rammed-earth homes have 14-20 inch walls where earth is compacted between formwork to make a homogeneous mass wall. It’s been used for centuries and is catching-on as sustainable and beautiful building material. The concept is this: Buildings consume 45 percent of our energy use in Canada and the United States. With energy costs at an all time high and mass environmental awareness forcing change, buildings are the primary place we can impact global warming. In this age of peak oil and historic oil spills, we can transform the built environment now through proven ecological and sustainable alternatives. One of these alternatives is to use the very ground we live on to build the walls of our buildings. Check this out: Here are some of the statistics he provided our group about this unique process:
Energy Efficiency
The combination of heat retention from the mass of rammed earth and insulation makes rammed-earth homes suited for various climates. In fact, heating and cooling is efficient and there is little or no maintenance with rammed-earth homes. It insulates 13.5 times more than a concrete wall of the same thickness. Insulated rammed earth also has incredible thermal capacity, capturing and storing energy through passive solar design.

Sustainability
Most buildings have a life expectancy of less than 50 years. This cycle exhausts energy and resources and creates a toxic waste stream by constantly rebuilding. As well, there are no building codes or standards that require buildings be disaster resistant, healthy (containing no toxic materials) or meet other important benchmarks of a quality construction such as energy efficiency, environmental impact and durability.
Fire and Earthquake resistance
Rammed-earth’s green design is low to no impact, using sustainable, locally sourced and ecological building materials. Durable stabilized, insulated rammed earth walls are virtually fire, water and earthquake proof.
In Australia, rammed earth walls have a four-hour fire rating, the highest for Australian codes. Fire tests to AS 1530.4 – 1985 on a 300mm-thick rammed earth wall with 6 percent cement gave 240/240/240 for structural adequacy, integrity and insulative capacity. This means the wall is still standing strong after four hours in a fire!
Designed to withstand seismic events in Zone 5 (San Francisco and Los Angeles), the compressive strength of a rammed-earth building typically falls between 10–30 MPa (1,450––4,500 psi), making it highly seismically resistant. Many rammed-earth homes have achieved more than 6,000psi with only 10 percent cement and regularly exhibit the same strength as concrete with a fraction of the cement. Because the bending moment increases with the cube of the wall thickness, comparing a 24” rammed-earth wall and 8” concrete wall, the rammed-earth wall is 13.5 times as strong.
Environmentally conscious
Comparing resources required in building construction, a typical five-acre treed parcel supplies wood for 20 wood-framed houses, while a five-acre gravel pit has sufficient suitable earth to build rammed earth walls for more than 5,000 houses. Further, no precious topsoil is lost when building with rammed earth.
Improved Air quality
Many homes and buildings continue to be constructed with forced or recycled air, inadequate ventilation, temperature fluctuations, uncontrolled humidity, and poor sound quality. Rammed-earth buildings are excellent at controlling humidity through the humidity flywheel effect. Bringing more than double the mass to a building, which in turn doubles the thermal and humidity flywheel benefits, rammed-earth buildings result in better air quality and moisture control, maintaining an interior relative humidity in the low 50s, which is ideal for human comfort and an impossible humidity for mold to grow.
Healthier environment
We spend 90 percent of our time indoors and needlessly surround ourselves with carcinogens and other toxins. Lumber manufacturers douse most building wood with toxic fungicides to prevent mold growth. Often, the built environment is layered with chemicals and provides ideal habitat for mold, which contribute to asthma, multiple chemical sensitivities, immune system deficiencies and other health issues. Besides being bad for your health, such measures don’t always stop carpenter ants, termites and dry rot from slowly consuming wood houses.
Why does a typical wood wall contain elements like volatile organic compounds (VOCs), phthalates, fungicides and urea formaldehyde? Doesn’t the Building Code ensure that only healthy materials can be used? No, the Building Code is there to ensure the minimum level of safety in buildings and, at this point in time, toxic materials aren’t deemed to be a safety issue.
Unlike most building materials, rammed earth walls are non-toxic and maintenance-free, requiring no sealants or finishes, which preserves indoor air quality. Rammed-earth builders use an integral admixture that seals the wall all the way through, reducing the need for ongoing maintenance. In addition, rammed-earth buildings eliminate toxins from wall assemblies, creating interior spaces that are healthy to inhabit. This is true not only of the wall itself, but also through the exclusion of interior and exterior finishes that can contain many of the most toxic and environmentally destructive components found on a construction site. Amazing.
Rammed-earth homes incorporate traditional ceilings and roofs. Our guy says that he plans on topping-off his home with high performance reflective insulation, making it the most energy efficient and sustainable home that (he imagines) can be built. He plans on installing ecologically smart window film, and solar attic fans and electric systems.
When he finished his talk, the room was silent. Just a bunch of guys with cigars hanging out of their mouths…jealous and dreaming of our own rammed-earth homes in the future.

Eagle Shield has helped over 30,000 homeowners be more comfortable and reduce their energy expense. Our customers love us! Read Northern California resident Marrianna Isaacs ’ story…

Eagle Shield: Tell us what it was that you were experiencing that resulted your investing in Eagle shield?

Marrianna: I have a condo that was built in 1984 with single pane windows. In the winter the downstairs portion of my condo would be least 15-20 degrees colder than upstairs. Trying to heat the downstairs to a comfortable temperature meant that the upstairs would be 100 degrees. And in the summer the upstairs would be stifling.

Eagle Shield: It sounds like you needed a way to achieve a consistent temperature throughout your home. After consulting with Eagle Shield, what service or products did you decide would get you the results you were looking for?

Marrianna: I decided to have Eagle Shield’s High Performance Reflective Insulation  installed. (Note: Reflective Insulation – sometimes called radiant barrier insulation –  is a patented, strong, thin aluminum foil sheet designed to block radiant heat transfer across open spaces. Installed on the rafters in your attic, it works with your existing insulation to boost the insulating power of your home.)

Eagle Shield: How did working with Eagle Shield meet or exceed your expectations? What was the ‘before and after’ difference?

Marrianna: Before having the High Performance Reflective Insulation installed I would wear several layers of clothing and turn on the heater and it would run for three hours. The downstairs temperature would raise only 5-10 degrees (not much to notice) and the upstairs would be at least 40-50 degrees hotter. In the summer the condo would be very hot when I got home.  Now with the Eagle Shield Insulation I do not have to wear several layers of clothing and the downstairs warms up much faster and stays warm after I turn off the heater. In the summer the condo stays fairly cool when I arrive home after 6pm.

Eagle Shield: How would you rate the competency and professionalism of the service, and follow-up provided by Eagle Shield?

Marrianna: An Eagle Shield staff member explained the value of Reflective Insulation and what it would do for me, and I decided to purchase it. The installers were great. They were professional, friendly and were informative. They were in and out of my home quickly and they cleaned up after themselves in a timely manner. The staff member followed up to see if the product was working like she had explained and if I was satisfied.

Eagle Shield: How do you feel about recommending Eagle Shield to others?

Marrianna: I have recommended the Eagle Shield High Performance Reflective  Insulation to my friends and family.

In our first blog dealing with hidden energy guzzlers, we discovered how to save energy by cleaning the coils and checking to see that the refrigerator and freezer compartment seals were, in fact, sealing correctly…which they weren’t. I thought we were through with anything dealing with cooling or freezing. Not so fast, I was told…

My next discovery really falls into the “hidden” category because it’s one of those appliances that are described by the phrase: ‘out-of-sight, out-of-mind.’ It’s our freezer. Not the little one over the refrigerator, but the big one in the garage. And…the one in the basement. Why have two freezers, you might ask? Good question. Especially since neither of them is full. Our thinking, upon reflection, was to have more freezer space for those periodic trips to Costco, when we found ourselves buying more stuff than our little freezer (above the refrigerator) could hold. However, we have never really filled both of these freezers. The big one in the garage is a 16 cubic feet upright and the one in the basement is a 7 cubic foot chest model.

By the way, I grew-up in a small community in northern Minnesota, where we used large freezers to store vegetables grown in the garden and for sides of beef or venison. As a kid I remember that someone was into the freezer almost every day. That’s just the way it was. Everyone had a freezer. But my life is different now. I don’t have a large garden where I grow my own vegetables. I don’t hunt large animals where I need to store hundreds of pounds of game. My only hunting is done at Costco and it just feels like we’re supposed to have one.

We have found that the foods we use most often go into the freezing unit of the refrigerator. When we run out of room there, we put the overflow into the 7 cubic foot freezer in the basement, which on any given day, is around ¾ full. The big one in the garage? Well… it’s ½ full of stuff that we rarely eat, but don’t feel right about throwing away. We might just need it someday. The reality is that we have thrown a lot of food away due to freezer burn.

Here’s what I discovered regarding the economics of having this extra freezer space in my life. At $0.17 per KWH, the large freezer is costing me around $24.00 a month. The small one is costing me around $12.00 a month. That’s $36.00 a month for freezing mostly air. We were told that the fuller a freezer is, the more efficient it is. We were also told to make sure the coils in the back of the freezer were clean. Another thing was to check for ice. Check for ice?? It’s a freezer! Of course there’s going to be ice! What he meant was this: If we had ¼ inch of ice in our freezer (which we did on the big one), it’s acting as an insulator and is causing the freezer to work harder and use more electricity. Talk about adding freezer insult to injury.

It was recommended that we get rid of one of the freezers. If we wanted to keep the big one, then make sure the empty space is filled with sturdy plastic jugs filled not quite to the top with water. If we decided to keep the small one, it would cost us less electricity, but we felt it might limit us in terms of space.

It’s amazing the clarity that can come with a bottle of wine and a pizza. We decided to get rid of the large freezer. Here’s why:
• It would cut our ‘extra’ freezer costs from $36 down to $12 a month
• It would free-up needed space in the garage.
• It would cause us to use more discretion when shopping at Costco, and buy only what we have room for.
• It would eliminate the waste of freezer-burnt food.
• The utility company offered to haul the big freezer away for free if we couldn’t sell it on Craig’s list.
Another $24 a month saved, plus garage space gained as well as some needed changes in our shopping habits. Who knew that our utilities energy efficiency ‘coach’ would turn-out to be a financial advisor as well.