Making the AmericanDream AffordableMaking the AmericanDream Affordable

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he fever to own a home is as pri-mal an instinct as humans canhave. It is the American dream. So

how is it that 10% of the average landfillwaste stream in America is usable buildingmaterial when we have millions of familiesthat do not own homes? I build low-incomehousing for about $30 per sq. ft. using free,salvaged and recycled materials. I call what Ido aftermarket building. My minimum-wage workers first come to me unskilled butwill eventually compete for higher-payingjobs because of the skills they develop. WhileI must follow all the rules—building codesand the laws of physics—the city inspectorshave all been cheerleaders. I probably couldincrease the profit if I were to take less timeworking on design details, but I like thework and have a waiting list of buyers.

Much building waste can be usedFew other industries in the United Stateshave a sadder record of exploiting theirrefuse than does the building industry. Inpractically all other sectors of the economy,aftermarket industries thrive. In construc-tion, however, leftovers, cutoffs, mismatchesand mistakes are routinely taken to landfillsor simply burned. There probably isn’t a con-tractor in America who doesn’t grieve aboutthe usable materials that are discarded. Inthe meantime, low-income families must ei-ther rent or buy inflated American-dreamlook-alikes with vinyl-covered foam doorcasings, cheap carpets and thin walls.

The reasons for the waste are evidentenough. First, labor is disproportionatelymore expensive than materials. If it’s fasteror easier to pick up a new 2x4 than to pullnails out of an old one, we grab the new oneand throw away the old one. Second, mostbuilding activity follows standardized strate-gies, so if a particular thing is not standard—for instance if that old 2x4 is a full 2 in. by 4 in. instead of 11⁄2 in. by 31⁄2 in.—it goes tothe landfill. Third, specialization and “cost-plus” business concepts typically include a10% slippage to allow for culls and mistakes.Anything left over, while ultimately chargedto the home buyer, eventually goes to thetrash. After all, the home buyer doesn’t knowwhat to do with two lengths of #4 rebar.

Besides these market-driven factors, thereis a deep predilection in our DNA that de-mands unity; all doors must match, and allceramic in the bathroom must be the samecolor. Odd things go to the landfill.

After I asked a few local companies aboutmaterials and a few people had stopped bythe work site to ask what I was doing, donat-ed materials started flooding in. Now, I get acall at least once a week from someone want-

ing to give me something, from vanity sinks,dishwashers and bidets to pallets of granite,stoves and windows. I have developed a fair-ly large network for material acquisition. Ibuy very little at full price.

Materials are everywhere, by the truckloadand often absolutely free. And people sup-port me with contributions because it is clearthat I put the material to good use. Weyer-haeuser of Houston saves its culls, cutoffs

A Texas builder tackles affordable housing with recycled materials, job-site waste and minimum-wage crews

BY DAN PHILLIPS

T

Rescued from the landfill. Perched on a pile of salvaged scraps, the author (photo fac-ing page) poses in front of his latest project. Virtually everything in this kitchen (photoabove) was recycled. The cabinets are plywood scraps, clad in cedar, and the islandcounter is a glulam cutoff.

and damaged returns for me. McCoy’s, aSouthwest building-supply chain, lets me haveWeyerhaeuser’s loads delivered to their localoutlet because I don’t have a forklift. Theyoff-load, reload their trucks in manageablequantities and deliver the materials where Ineed them (photo above). Other lumbercompanies send me 18-wheeler loads, charg-ing $200 a load for shipping. T&T Lumberof Kendleton gave me four full truckloads—siding, lattice, scaffolding, oak boards—gratis. After only three years of doing this, Ihave so many materials that I desperatelyneed a warehouse. In fact, the first house Ibuilt this way required cutting only one tree,a southern yellow pine, for new lumber.

Design grows from the materialsI design houses around the materials I have,finding ways to meet or exceed code whilealso supporting a design idea. Walls do notneed to be 2x4 studs, spaced 16 in. o. c.; androofs do not need to be asphalt shingles.Anything that sheds water and will last canbe roofing material: old tin, license plates ordiscontinued highway signs, for instance.

After consulting an engineer, I constructedthe exterior walls of one house entirely from22-in. rough-sawn cutoffs of western redcedar 2x6s, 4x6s and 6x6s—stacked, nailedand glued together into 6-in. thick blocksthat we laid up like bricks, gluing and toe-nailing each one to the bricks both belowand next to it. A continuous sill and top platelock each wall into a frame. Interior walls in-

tersect the outer walls at least every 16 ft.,forming buttresses that address lateral load.

Having accumulated a pile of Weyer-haeuser’s Parallam (engineered parallel-strand lumber, or PSL) planks, 22 in. long, Iused 9-ft. spans of cast-off I-joists for themain floor joists, bumped them out to 22 in.o. c. and had a 13⁄4-in. thick PSL subfloor—enough beef to hold a cement truck.

If I have 100 of these and 300 of those,their repetition can produce a pattern andenhance design. Repetition is crucial. Itdoesn’t make any difference what “these” and“those” are. Slices of osage orange with ac-cents of black-walnut slices form the rosetteblocks over interior doors in one house. Ihave used hickory nuts for decorative fret-work and eggshells as molds for larger “but-tons” on corbels (inset photo, p. 98). Ofcourse, first I had breakfast. Then I simplyfilled an eggshell with Bondo auto-bodyputty, painted the egg, drilled pilot holes andnailed it up. There isn’t a person in the worldwho would say, “Honey! Stop! That man haschicken eggs on his house.” No one is thewiser, and those things are nearly free. Re-searching the availability of commerciallymarketed appointments often takes moretime than a quick homespun solution.

Some designs are interesting enough tomerit extra time. I built a bathtub from 2x4scrap (top photo, p. 99). After gluing andnailing short pieces into the shape of a tub, Iground off the corners, filled the voids withauto-body putty, applied two coats of fiber-

glass and then two coats of epoxy paint.Voilà! A bathtub.

Sliding-glass patio doors go to landfills bythe thousands. The later models are double-insulated, tempered panels—pricey stuff. Iframed a patio door into the roof (13-in-12pitch) for a skylight. Not only is it double-insulated and tinted, but it is impervious toultraviolet rays, unlike plastic skylights. Oth-er materials found alternative uses through-out the same house. An antique shoe last,used for shaping leather shoes, became thepedal on a foot-activated laundry chute (bot-tom photo, p. 99). I used a glulam cutoff fora butcher-block counter (photo p. 95). Left-over plywood formed the carcases for thekitchen cabinets, with cedar cutoffs as a cov-ering. Hickory nuts serve as door handlesand drawer pulls (center photo, p. 99).

Make the inspector’s job easyOf course, in any type of building, structuralconcepts must take a front seat. Because lo-cal building codes do not cover alternativebuilding strategies and because there is noway to grade salvage material, I overcompen-sate. It must be absolutely clear to my in-spector that the house will not fall down.

There is no substitute for an engineer’sstamp on plans submitted to a municipalbuilding department. City engineers quicklyevaluate standard plans and strategies, butthey cannot be expected to have knowledgeof alternative approaches. If worked out inadvance with an engineer and explained in a

96 FINE HOMEBUILDING

“Few other industries in the United States have a sadder record ofexploiting their refuse than does the building industry.”

A basket-weave turret. The curved walls of this turret are made of 2x4 cutoffs, such as those shown on the facing page, stacked uplike bricks. The stairs leading to the turret were salvaged intact from another house and delivered for $20.

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98 FINE HOMEBUILDING

set of plans, particular tactics sail throughthe permit process with minor tweaking.

Building inspectors gladly answer ques-tions and are usually willing to help sleuthout solutions to knotty problems. But likecity engineers, building inspectors are at adisadvantage. Their job is to pass judgmenton building strategies not covered in thecode, so if structural integrity is not obvious,the building won’t pass. I do whatever the in-spector tells me to do, cheerfully, even if Idisagree. And I get a bonus when I ask for aninspector’s advice. He gives it to me. Free.

I have more freedom than mostarchitects and buildersThe house that I am currently building isbased on a Budweiser can. It won’t look like

a can of beer, but the color scheme and de-sign takeoffs are unmistakable (photo p. 94).The house is red, white, blue and silver, withthe barley and hops design worked into thefront gable. There will be an Anheuser-Busch eagle on the front door. The design ofthe corbels will be lifted directly from thecan. Maybe I’ll put a lizard somewhere,maybe not.

The intended owners of this house like thatdesign, but the buyers on my waiting listhave little dominion over the design, a con-dition that is made absolutely clear in the be-ginning. A family can specify the number ofbedrooms and baths, but that is pretty muchit because the design grows out of the mate-rials. If they don’t like the house, they don’thave to buy it. I simply go to the next family

Fine home, low impact. Having recycled so much material, the author estimates thatconstructing this home required cutting only one new tree for lumber. The larger but-tons on the corbels (photo left) are auto-body putty molded in eggshells. The smallerbuttons, as well as the fretwork over the porch, are hickory shells.

DECEMBER 2000/JANUARY 2001 99

on the list. Very few architectsor contractors have such a de-gree of freedom.

One minimum-wagecrew does it allI hire only unskilled workers,but that doesn’t mean thatthey are ineffective. Withproper tutelage, skills comequickly, along with the abilityto make decisions and makedo. Workers are constantlyforced into stretching dwin-dling materials for the task athand. That encourages themto develop resources theymight not otherwise be awareof and to anticipate continual-ly where they’re headed withwhat they have. That kind ofskill is of service on any job.

My crew develops a widerange of skills, from concrete and tile toframing, cabinet work, roofing and aware-ness of design and design opportunities. Un-skilled workers are not tainted by “procedur-al precedent.” They simply don’t know that“it’s not done that way.” Although oftenenough that gets in the way of efficiency,equally as often it’s a bonus; new ideas areborn from naiveté and experimentation.Keeping control of the design helm is para-mount, but input from the crew is alwayswelcome. After a year on my crew, workershave a good bit they can offer contractors forhigher pay. Any contractor can freely raid mycrew for workers, provided he is offering per-manent work at higher pay.

Work with families to arrange financingMy clients have the home-owning fever justlike everyone else. They are willing to pay afair price for value received and are surpris-ingly able to do so if they can just get overthe down-payment barrier. So when I offerto build them a house with monthly pay-ments that are equal to or less than theirrent, with no down payment, a waiting listaccumulates quickly.

Parents working three jobs who still findtime to read to their kids and fix theirplumbing—they are the people I want tobuild for. If they have character resourceswell beyond whatever a credit report wouldindicate and have that peculiar fever, togeth-er we can make it happen. The price of thehouse is whatever a certified appraiser saysit’s worth. As the builder, my risk is bettingthat I can complete a project sufficiently be-

low its appraised value tomake a profit. I have to decidehow much time a particularproject is worth, psychicallyand financially.

If a family can qualify for in-stitutional financing, I help toarrange the financing andguarantee the down paymentas a second lien. If I carry thenote, the rate is 10% because Iam not a bank. The note ishandled as a lease with an op-tion to buy, and all paymentsmade are applied to the priceof the house. Such an arrange-ment defers closing costs untila family is in a stronger posi-tion to manage them. In themeantime, I can use the prop-erty as collateral for a loan tofund the next project. Theymust exercise their option to

buy within three to five years, which encour-ages discipline. A family that did not initiallyqualify for a loan usually can after three yearsof steady payments. If they drop the ballthree months in a row, the contract is void,and the house goes to another family on thelist after a reasonable transition period.

But there are many ways to carry a note. Abank would have a hard time processing pay-ments in chickens, for instance. I can acceptchickens. Most of the money has to be there,but I accept site cleanup, materials acquisi-tion, even child care for my workers’ chil-dren. The crew can in turn repay me. Barter-ing is wildly successful, centuries old andtime-honored. My clients may not havemuch money, but ask them to dispatch awild, feral pig from the East Texas woods fora barbecue, and their account suddenly be-comes current. Get them to gather a basketof wild dewberries or pecans, or give them ajob they can do in their living room, likepainting fretwork, and they shine.

So the road from sharecropper to home-owner does not need to be a rocky one,fraught with red tape and institutional barri-ers. It can be as simple as builders exploitingthe detritus of their industry and asking ahigh-school dropout if he wants a job. Askany sharecropper if he’d like to own a homefor his family, and notice what crosses hisface. The fever in his eyes will make youthink twice about the arrogance of throwingsomething away. �

Dan Phillips builds in Huntsville, Texas. His Website is www.phoenixcommotion.com. Photos byDavid Ericson and Chuck Lockhart.

Not your average fiberglass tub. With a shell of 2x4 cutoffs, the au-thor ground off interior edges and smoothed the surface with auto-body putty in preparation for two layers of fiberglass and epoxy paint.

Waste not, want not. Hickory nuts andblocks of cast-off wood form door han-dles and drawer pulls.

More materials laundered for reuse. Thecedar-lined laundry chute opens with astep lever fashioned of found wood andan antique shoe last.