Meeting Notices

General membership 
Meets the second Tuesday, Nov. 13, at 7 p.m. at the Carpenters Hall, 2205 N. Lombard, Portland. We will be giving out 15 turkeys as door prizes. State Representative Dan Gardner, a member of Electricians Local 48, will talk about his candidacy for state labor commissioner.

Retirees
Retirees meet for lunch the second Monday, Nov. 12, at 11 a.m. at JJ North’s, 10520 NE Halsey, Portland.

Executive Board
Executive Board meets the fourth Tuesday, Nov. 27, at 7 p.m. at the Carpenters Hall, 2205 N. Lombard, Portland. 

Halibut fishing in Alaska

Jerry Krahn, longtime Local 247 member and former officer and business representative, shows some evidence of how he’s spending his time now that he’s drawing a Union pension.

Reduced dues are available again

Please note that the reduced dues are being made available again for next year. The 2002 working cards will be in sometime at the beginning of November. This year they are red, white and blue. The reduced dues options are $200 for yearly and $60 for quarterly. In order to take advantage of either of these options, you must have your payment into the office by Dec. 31, 2001. If you have any questions, please feel free to give the secretaries at the office a call.

Trading away the farm

The proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas and new World Trade Organization agreements would speed American family farms toward bankruptcy, according to Trading Away U.S. Farms, a new report by the Economic Policy Institute. While U.S. trade and agricultural policies force farmers to take losses by exporting their products worldwide, the report explains, the proposed global trade agreements would exacerbate the situation by ending government aid to farmers. To read the report, click on www.epinet.org/briefingpapers/sept01agbp.html.

Put families first

In opposition to a Republican economic stimulus proposal that would reward corporations and the wealthy, the AFL-CIO has created a blueprint for economic stimulus that provides both immediate and long-term help for America’s working families and the nation’s struggling economy. For a complete look at the AFL-CIO Blueprint for Economic Recovery, visit www.aflcio.org/news/2001/1017_blueprint.htm.

One carpenter’s views on straw bale construction

By GENE PICARIELLO
Local 247

There are many things that draw me to the idea of straw bale as a means of affordable housing. Here are some:

• It has been calculated that the manufacture of the materials of a wood frame and fiberglass wall requires 30 times the BTUs to produce as a similarly sized straw bale wall.
• It is estimated the United States produces 200 million tons of waste straw each year, enough to go into the construction of 5 million homes. Instead, much of it is burned. The state of California burns over a million tons of straw each year, which produces about 61,000 tons of carbon monoxide, more than twice the amount produced by the state’s electric power plants.
• Straw bale walls have an R value of between R-45 and R-50. The Department of Energy built a demonstration house near Ganado, Arizona, which was completed in 1994; in a Web site they maintain about the house, they estimate a savings of $600 of year for heating and cooling a straw house, which cost $4,000 less to build than a similarly sized conventional wood framed house.
• Stucco bale walls withstood 1,850 degrees Fahrenheit for four hours in a test by the National Research Council of Canada. Similar tests have been conducted by several organizations and states in this country with equally positive results.
• With the population of the planet growing and natural resources being depleted, straw bale offers great possibilities for providing housing especially in Third World nations. Some time ago a delegation from Mongolia toured a number of straw bale houses in the United States, and recently while surfing the Web, I found a site about straw bale houses being built in Mongolia.

So after 17 years of more than just casual interest, this past July my wife Patty and I spent 12 days working on a straw bale house being constructed by Martha and Curtis Bear Quiver of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in southeastern Montana. The Bear Quiver family became the first to receive a USDA mortgage for a load-bearing straw bale house. The non-profit organization Red Feather Development Group worked in conjunction with the University of Washington School of Construction providing the design and engineering; while acting as general contractor and providing for the daily needs of the many volunteers.

Summing up my overall feelings as far as the build is concerned is not easy. While it is honor to meet and work with people who are willing to travel hundreds of miles to donate their labor, it also frustrating to be one of three or four professionals amongst 30 volunteer building novices being led by not one but four architects. Also, I believe post-and-beam style is preferable to load-bearing walls, which seem to be more time consuming, offering little if any additional wood savings over post-and-beam, and requiring more in the way of mechanical fasteners. Finally, I felt that the hand application of three coats of stucco (on both sides of the exterior walls) was too time consuming with a construction schedule just three weeks long.

At this point I’m not sure what my next step in straw bale construction will be, but I still believe in its potential. l know I want to investigate stucco application via stucco pumps. Also there are debates about moisture and how best to keep it out or remove it, as straw will deteriorate when moisture levels exceed 20 percent for extended periods of time. On this issue I haven’t yet decided what I believe to be the best approach. Finally I’m interested in talking to other Carpenters who share this interest in straw bale construction, and to that end you can reach me at pcrllo@saw.net or call the Local office at 503-289-9632.

Letter from a member

Many union members have some age (at least) under their belt and this may not the first economic downturn many of us have seen. This has a possibility of being the most significant however. While we are blessed now with the continuing of the low interest rates that spur building, I suggest there is a curse to letting this go on too long.

This curse can be seen in the depression that Japan has suffered the decade of the ‘90s. In the ‘80s they had very high land values, and as those land values fell in the ‘90s their banks fell as well. This can happen here if we add to the housing stock so that housing prices are bid lower and lower, forcing mortgage markets into collapse.

Much better for the long term is to build infrastructure items that increase nearby values, rather than bid down housing by building too much. So advocating for school, bridge, and high speed rail now is by far best for the economy, and incidentally is good too for carpenters. Many of us have worked in the schools and have seen how tumbled down they are, where the students must drink bottled water because the pipes are so bad. I recommend that members as well as union staff actively advocate for school building programs. It is good for the economy, the future, and good for carpenters

Fraternally,

David Bean 
Carpenters Local 247