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In 2003, DBN will embark on an ambitious straw bale construction project to create a 2,400 square foot house focused on "simple elegance". This eco-friendly construction will feature local materials, including low-impact lumber cut from the DBN farm, wheat straw from the Miller Farm next door, earthen-clay plaster/stucco and sandstone from Carroll County, and most importantly, local expertise and labor.
The 3 bedroom, 3 bath house was designed with the following goals in mind:
- Provide spaces that fit our lifestyles
- Open rooms
- Low maintenance interior and exterior
- Work space for future processing of cottage industry products (berries, honey, bees wax, etc.)
- Use lower environmental impact and local materials where ever possible
- Reduce energy consumption for heating, cooling, lighting, etc.
- Integrate the interior views and exterior look and house location with the surrounding landscapes
To get ready for this project, Diana and I have spent the past couple years reading books like the Passive Solar House, the Straw Bale House, Serious Straw Bale Building, Independent Living, the Solar Living Handbook, Humanure Handbook, a Permaculture Primer. Then we spent 10 days at Real Goods’ Solar Living Institute in Hopland, CA to learn more about passive solar design, gray and black water treatment systems, permaculture and photovotaics from the "experts" and they were! We also visited and talked to homesteaders like Joe and Jeanene Jenkins, Feng Shui consultant Cynthia J. Hoffman and just about anyone else who would listen or give us some ideas. We also found some local experts to help us…
You know the old saying it doesn’t take a rocket scientist, well in our case the design of our natural home does, well kind of. Mark Holberecht of Natural Homesteads www.naturalhomesteads.com Is a rocket scientist (chemical engineer) for the Nasa Glenn Research facility by day, but is an eco-engineer by night. Mark will be leading our straw bale design effort and will help get us started on the hands-on portions as well. He has helped organizations such as Oberlin College and Eco-City Cleveland, as well as individuals, design and build straw bale structures.
Local log home and timber framers Gary Roof and John Atkins are acting as our general contractors. They are also our loggers, sawyers and carpenters. Gary and John are not spring chickens, but you should see them work. As John says, "we only work about 6 hours a day, but that is straight through, and there’s no fooling around." Gary and John have done lots of different types of building project in the Carroll County area and have some of the best "can do" attitudes we’ve ever seen.
So, here is what we ended up with:
- The structure will be a post and beam configuration cut from red pines on the DBN property (see Low-impact Logging for more details on logging). Red pine is sufficiently strong for this project and has fairly good water and insect resistance. Because red pine has a fairly low shrinkage factor (amount of shrinkage in the diameter of the log as it dries), all the framing lumber will only be air-dried to reduce energy consumption associated with standard kiln drying processes. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, this species of pine has little commercial value in our area. These factors make the red pine ideal for our construction project.
- a passive solar design to reduce heating and cooling energy needs. Passive solar uses a combination of house orientation (true South is best), large South-facing windows, substantial solar mass (to capture heat/cool for slow release)
- high efficiency, radiant floor heating using a thermal exchange unit plumbed from our 2-acre lake
- a large mud-room/summer kitchen for processing honey, bees wax, berry production and other cottage industry items
- grey water reclamation plumbing to capture water from showers, washing machines and bathroom sinks for irrigating non-food landscaping. Toilet and kitchen sink water (black water) will be routed to a traditional septic system.
- propane, on-demand water heaters that only heat the water when needed
- environmentally friendly paints, stains and wood preservatives
- natural lighting and high efficiency compact flourescent bulbs
Want to get some hands-on experience with eco-friendly building techniques? Did you always love to play in the mud when you were a kid? Interested in a learning vacation in a beautiful setting? Volunteers will be needed in late summer 2003 to help in the bale raising and to apply the earthen-clay plaster. Contact us at paul@distratectbynature.com if you are interested or would like more information.
In the future we hope to also take advantage of an existing 30 by 50 concrete foundation to build a larger space for informal lodging, educational activities, entertainment and storage. Given that the walls on the lower storage area and basement of this foundation are literally 1 foot thick concrete and contain one mile of reinforcing rebar, we have dubbed the project the BB&B project—bombshelter bed and breakfast.
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