[Greenbuilding] New Type of Chipboard

[John Salmen]

I like the 'minimal surplus' ratio and would only say that rather than doing
things wrong we have no clue as to what 'right' is. In the 50's the US
established something called T values for soil erosion - giving permission
for farmers (agribusiness) to be right or not wrong if erosion was something
like .5 to 1mm roughly. They (whoever that is) now puts conventional agri
soil loss at 1mm/yr globally (wherever that is). The question really is what
makes and sustains soil. The only models are native vegetation and one of
the terms applied is 'geologic erosion rate' - being the rate that the decay
of native vegetation matches the rate at which the soil erodes. In the PNW I
think that is now considered to be about 100% i.e. no surplus. I have 50
year old fir trees falling over indiscriminately in my woods because there
is no soil to support them. I have left them in the lying down status.

Can we make engineered building products from corn - sure why not - will it
succeed - probably not in the short term as we already have a huge industry
grinding up quick growing trees and it takes a decade or so for an industry
to develop and few more decades to be supplanted. Look at cellulose
insulation - a stupid product that has consumed far too many resources but
once it became a product the resources were dedicated to it. Same with
engineered wood.

The problem still is scale. I think the average house size in NA is around
2500 sq. ft. which is about 1000 sq. ft. too much for the average family
size. That is where the trees or corn are going. Ironically people are also
consuming about the same ration of calories more than are needed (corn, corn
fed beef?) - which is also soil loss.

I am now using engineered wood extensively in structures as well as metal -
whatever does the work with the least material. I am at the point where if a
client wants to see wood - I can recommend taking a hike in what are left of
our forests.



	
-----Original Message-----
From: Greenbuilding [mailto:greenbuilding-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org]
On Behalf Of Topher
Sent: September-20-14 3:42 PM
To: archilogic at yahoo.ca; Green Building
Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] New Type of Chipboard

On 9/18/2014 9:31 AM, RT wrote:
> So, in addition to depleting nitrogen from the soil (nitrogen being 
> essential to leafy vegetative growth), the long decomposition time of 
> the very coarse debris hinders planting of the next growing season's crop.

My understanding is that this should be phrased as 'binding up nitrogen
during the decomposition'.  In other words, decomposing woody materials
requires nitrogen in the process, but that nitrogen eventually becomes
available to plants again, it isn't lost (to the atmosphere, for example).

That said, soil chemistry and biology is incredibly complex, and we
generally appear to be doing almost completely wrong.

The basic take away is that removing ANY organic materials from the
biological cycle, beyond a minimal surplus*, is going to reduce the efficacy
of the system.

* - Minimal surplus can be guesstimated at 1/1Millionth of yearly production
(calculated from our current usage of fossil fuels at the rate of a million
years of production per year).

Thank You Kindly,

Topher

--
Topher Belknap
Green Fret Consulting
Kermit didn't know the half of it...
http://www.GreenFret.com/
topher at greenfret.com

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