At 03:19 PM 11/17/2000 -0500, you wrote:
Do folks know that there is already a greenbuilding listserve?
DH

Hi DH
        the idea of an NBN is not to replace a green building network, this is a regional natural building network in Coastal Southern Cal, that will gather info on all the natural buildings straw bale, cob, adobe all the hybrid combinations and all the systems interconnected to them like solar, greywater. Each house will be catalogue on covering builder,architect and how the natural systems in the house are working. This is meant to discover which natural building systems in our regain work over time.
        We are hoping to centralize this information so that folks in our regain who want to build natural houses will have a source of houses built and what works so they can talk to folks with natural houses to see if this is the way they want to go or not. It will be an advocacy group for meeting with Planners , banks ,insurance, real estate to educate and show that there are natural house in our region already build that work.
        The system we are trying to start in our regain is based on the regional organization in SW Colorado  www.smartshelter.com.which has function for 6  years. Natural Building is site specific, what works well in one area does not mean it will transfer to our area, and the ideal natural house for our climatic regain will develop in time and will be a hybrid of many types of building which uses all of the interconnecting stuff like solar, passive solar, local building materials.
        Like all permaculture designs house building and the materials is also needs to be site specific too
and this Natural Building Network is meant to foster this at a regional level. coastal Southern California
                                wes
below is gary duncan's of smartshelter ideas that where used in the workshop he presented

Sat workshop will be in four parts: an overview of the natural building network, history, intent, funding and functions. Session #2 will go into detail with the functions(40 of them)including case studies, advocacy, task forces, video production, outreach, etc.. Session #3-forming a natural building network for coastal southern California-can you do it and how. Session #4- one hour slide show on natural building techniques geared for builders/ architects-state of the art working systems and design Extensive documentation will be included with the workshop including samples of Smart Shelter forms, documents and reports (to work as starter samples for your area)