Learning to Build (With Straw) and Power (With Solar) a Home by DVD

If you will sit for several hours to read a book about home building, will you sit for several hours to watch a book-length DVD on the subject? After watching "Building With Awareness" and "Green Building," two recent DVDs, I would say yes.

I predict that DVDs will make an important contribution to the education of both home builders and homeowners because so many aspects of building can be confusing when reduced to words but straightforward when you can see them.

"Building With Awareness: The Construction of a Hybrid Home" is the work of Ted Owens, who is both a filmmaker and a designer. For the viewer, it is a happy combination. Owens not only knows his subject well, but also knows how to present it in a way that will capture his audience and hold its attention for two hours and 42 minutes -- the running time of his DVD.

As Owens takes you through the design and construction of a straw-bale, solar-powered house that he built for himself in Correles, N.M., an Albuquerque suburb, his camerawork makes you feel as if you're right there at the job site. (He shot most of the DVD himself.)

He realized that a small house would be easier to build and easier for an audience to follow, so his design is very modest -- one story with 650 square feet of living area plus a 100-square-foot sleeping loft overhead.

Owens's other passion -- sustainable design and the use of renewable and recycled building materials and renewable energy -- is clearly presented and explained.

To meet all his electricity needs, he installed high-tech solar photovoltaic panels on his roof. To meet his heating needs, he incorporated low-tech passive solar solutions into the design of his house. He used both passive solar heating (the winter sun pours though the south-facing windows and heats up the living areas) and thermal mass (the thick internal wall absorbs heat during the day and releases it at night, helping to stabilize the indoor temperature).

Owens's choice of building materials was similarly low-tech. He used straw bales to insulate the exterior walls and adobe bricks for his interior walls. Both interior and exterior walls are finished with earth plaster.

These materials do not require a high skill level; indeed, as you watch this DVD, it's easy to start imagining that you and a few buddies could build a similar house.

With his professional bias toward sustainability, Owens used recycled materials where possible. Most of the wood framing is salvaged lumber, the ceiling insulation is made of recycled newspaper and his rubble foundation is topped with a concrete mix that includes recycled fly ash, a waste byproduct produced by coal-fired electric generating plants.

Owens assembles a colorful cast of characters to tell his story. For example, the straw bales are installed by a group of Owens's friends under the supervision of Steve Bell, an alternative materials expert who shaves his head, wears unusual dangling earrings and speaks in a folksy manner. He makes a return visit to the job site to instruct another group of friends in the fine points of making the earth plaster used to finish the walls, both inside and out.

As the house is finished, we see the beauty in its hand-made imperfection and its gorgeous colors. The DVD makes a strong case for straw bale construction, but it makes an even stronger case for using simple, locally produced materials and traditional building styles that evolved in response to local climates.