Green Houses – Cheap, Sustainable, Efficient And Durable

by Paul Ciocoiu · May 17, 2016

Being an environmentalist is not just trendy and cool these days. It is more a necessity and maybe even more that, an imperative. Just the way we have used nature in discretionary manner for thousands of years, now nature is turning to us for a little help. And this can come in various ways, one of them being these green houses, natural, efficient and sustainable homes we will talk about today. We have approached this topic in separate articles, but today we will discuss it with one of the promoters of this healthy living style, the founder of the team behind Natural-home4u.com who raises such natural homes.

Starting in the early 200’s, but then in an organized manner since 2011, the team build sustainable house using various techniques: straw bale houses, cob and adobe houses and cordwood.

Nemeth Janos runs the team. He doesn’t like to be called owner or entrepreneur, he has repeatedly pointed out, because he doesn’t build green houses for the money, but to help. He learnt the job in Germany and France and then returned to Romania to teach others how to live in perfect harmony with nature. The very reason the team exists is because others need it, with no connection to financial gains, he added. For this very reason, he outlined, his colleagues all share the revenues equally.

So he is not running a business, but merely promoting a healthy living style. “We live off this job, of course, but we are not seeking to raise fortunes. A 100% sustainable home is got nothing to do with business, it is a house which we breathe life into by using whatever materials you can find on Earth,” he said. “I used to be a city dweller myself and I know that living in the city is all about finance: you pay rent, pay for the kindergarten and school, bank installments, money is never enough. Some people there dream of a house, but do not have sufficient revenues to even apply for a bank loan. But building a green house is done with little money, anyone can get such a home. And since this type of home has changed my life, I too want to help people being in the position I was in”, Nemeth Janos explained.

So what does an affordable price means, we naturally asked. There are two categories of customers, our interlocutor answered. There are those involving their entire family in the building process and then only need consultancy. And then there are those who want the team at Naural-home4u to build a house to the turnkey stage, which entails higher costs. “Building a sustainable house involves a lot of work, manual labor. And this is like craftsmanship, paid with more money, in our case 130 euros per square meter. It may seem much, but bear in mind you won’t end up living in some boxes, but real, aesthetic, energy efficient, practical and above all healthy”, he underlined.

Green houses – the Transylvanian hut

Nemeth Janos give his own example, a house he is now building for his family with three children, called the “Green hut of Transylvania”. The house sits on 80 square meters, built in a traditional style in the Mures County, featuring many organic shaped decorations. “I set myself a threshold of 3,000-4,000 Euros and I do not want to exceed it. This is a comfortable, durable house, warm in winter, cool in summer, just as any house should be”, he said. The house packs open spaces inside because, he argued, a home should keep a family together. “More than that, people should spend most of their time outdoors, the house is just for rest and shelter. Plus that an open space house can be heated more easily”, he added.

The price also varies according to the type of terrain because there are land plots which offer abundant natural materials. “The price ranges between 100 and 350 Euros per square meter. 100 Euros means the whole family is involved in the building process. Those who want cob houses have free materials, for instance, and they pay only for consultancy which rises the price to 130-150 Euros. For 350 Euros, a client pays for the whole team which delivers a turnkey house”, he further explained.

Nemeth Janos and his team build about 1-2 houses per year, besides renovating and finishing works. “We are not building to show off, we built for those who reach out to us. For this very reason, I am now focusing more on consultancy because it is crucial at this point to help each other”, he also says. Of all the building techniques mentioned earlier, he said the most sought after is the straw bale one.