Since commit 5446e42e718be081b3b7321034c3d6135fdbc41c of trisquel-builder, which introduced the sbuild system, this repository no longer provides the pbuilderrc file needed to correctly follow the package-helpers' documentation, and as far as I can see, no package helper builds without that file.
Merged as in https://devel.trisquel.info/trisquel/package-helpers/commit/46a77d18c3d6f7682276af7af23697fb53d606bb .
This should be fixed with the following pull request: https://devel.trisquel.info/trisquel/package-helpers/merge_requests/229 .
The truth is that the scripts in package-helpers don't need pbuilder. You can use the helpers and then sbuild pointing to the .DSC file generated by sbuild, so as to make the .DEB files.