I Want To Be In Baja

As I have said before in another post on straw-bale building, one of the attractions of retiring to El Dorado Ranch, near San Felipe in Baja, is the fact that the building of your own house, especially incorporating environmentally-friendly, energy-saving building techniques and features, is actively encouraged.

I was leafing through the first issue of the Building in Baja Newsletter and found a very interesting article on building with Bamboo.  It turns out that Bamboo forests actually soak up 17 times more carbon in their growth than does a tree forest!  Just imagine what could be done in terms of mitigating against the excess carbon problem if Bamboo became a universal material for building! My own plans had been aiming at a timber and straw-bale structure, but now I am inspired to look into the possibilities of incorporating Bamboo into the structure - perhaps in place of some or the timber framework. I need to do a bit more research on that, but it if I can encourage others to look at this awesome building material then I am happy to do so.  The Building in Baja article contains a list of websites where further information about Bamboo.  I encourage you to at least check out  www.deboerarchitects.com/BambooThoughts.html and www.bambooliving.com. Great stuff!

One thing you will notice in a lot of the houses at El Dorado Ranch is the very colorful Mexican Talavera sinks people have in their bathrooms - as pictured above.  These brightly colored sinks and tiles are very much a local tradition and they certainly add a touch local feel to your house.

However, before all you expert Do-It-Yourself-ers decide to do a bit of in-house plumbing you might want to read the latest edition of the ‘Building in Baja’ newsletter (PDF).  

The key difference with Talavera sinks is that you can’t use the standard faucet and drain combination with them.  Many Talavera sinks come without overflows.  ”They require a special drain specifically made for sinks without overflows”.  Also, because these sinks are made out of clay there can be considerable variation in the strength of the vessel and care needs to be taken when tightening the drain fixing to the sink.

Don’t let that discourage you though - they do look spectacular in a bathroom setting especially.  The key is to know what you are getting and where to find the information you need to know!  Building in Baja is a free newsletter with great local decorating and landscaping tips that you will certainly want to subscribe to if you are contemplating setting up a home there.

One of the things that attracted us in buy a housing plot at El Dorado Ranch is their commitment to lessening the impact of the development on the environment. The practical efforts to fulfill this commitment include the promotion of solar power; water conservation through the use of salt tolerant grasses on the golf course so that it can be watered with a mix of sea water and fresh water; the use of a biomembrane sewerage plant to allow recycle water to be used for irrigation; the use of greenspace within development areas - at least half the land area in the development plots is set aside for greenspace - not packing in as many houses as you can fit in the space like some developments; the careful removal and replanting of existing desert plant species; and the promotion of straw-bale house building.

I was very excited to find that staw-bale house building and other environmentally house building techniques were being promoted at El Dorado Ranch. My interest in straw-bale building stretches back to when I lived in Britain where interest in the technique has grown massively over the last few years. Straw-bales have superior insulation properties, are fire-safe due their dense compaction, is a cheap and renewable resource, and reduces the amount of wood required to build the house by up to 15%. Another benefit is that it is a technique you can very easily do for yourself. This is certainly one the green-building options we will be looking very closely at when we design our own house there.

There is a website - www.mexicogreenresort.com - which will give you much more details about how El Dorado Ranch is ‘trading lightly and developing responsibly’. We recently visited the ‘Green-Summit’ here in Phoenix where a lot of companies were showing off a whole variety of green-building possibilities. The great thing about building this way is that it can actually increase the value of your house when compared to a traditional house of the same size. This is because of the reduced energy costs involved. For every $1 dollar that is reduced from your annual utility bills, $20 dollars are added to the value of your house! How’s that for a win win situation!