The Straw House Blog - Home of Glen, Gil and Declan Hunter

Introducing Declan Hunter

Born: Oct 2, 2005
Weight: 7 lbs 3 oz.
Length: 22 inches

Posted by: Glen: October, 06, 2005

National Post

Joanne was interviewed today about life in a Straw Bale house by a lady from the National Post. A photographer came by afterwards. It’s for an article about the OSBBC Straw House Tour. They said the article should appear in the Real-Estate section next week - Thursday was mentioned.

Posted by: Glen: September, 20, 2005

OSBBC Straw House Tour

The 3rd Annual OSBBC Straw House Tour is Saturday October 1st, 2005. We will not be on it this year. Joanne’s due date is October 3rd so I expect that we will either have a newborn in the house (Sokolowski’s tend towards the early), or we will be driving up and down the bumpiest roads we can find (as far as Joanne is concerned any day now would be just fine).

If you were counting on coming by and seeing the place I apologize, we’ll be back in 2006.

Posted by: Glen: September, 20, 2005

Costruire

We’re in the latest issue of the Italian Architecture magazine Costruire. I have a copy of the magazine and it is gorgeous, but unfortunately I don’t read a word of Italian.

German book, Italian magazine, does this mean we’re world famous?

Posted by: Glen: September, 20, 2005

Resource Conference

I’ll be speaking this Saturday at the Trent Hills Resource Conference. Look for me 10:30am on Saturday Sept 17, 2005. I’ll be talking about designing and building your own house, what’s involved, what to expect, what you’ll never be able to expect, with my home as a template.

Posted by: Glen: September, 14, 2005

The Wood Stove

We have a wood stove. Installation was completed a couple of weeks ago and we’ve already had several small fires (it’s getting cool at night - that’s our excuse, not that we just want to play with the new stove). So far it looks like we’ve made the correct choice, the little box (and it is very little!) puts out quite a bit of heat.

Many thanks to Andrew at Renewable Energy of Plum Hollow in Kingston who made two trips out for the installation to make sure that everything was just right.

Posted by: Glen: September, 04, 2005

More Press

We’re in the lastest issue of Canadian Homes and Cottages: a nice article with some good pictures.

We’re also in the latest issue of the Italian architecture magazine Construire - in Italian, so I’ve only read various translations, it’s very technical, not really interested in us, just the house.

Posted by: Glen: September, 04, 2005

Stonework and Serendipity

Joanne and I were driving up to my parents on Saturday when she pointed out a tent, high up on a hill beside the highway. “I wonder what’s going on up there?” she said. As we came by the base of the hill there was a sign: Dry Stone Wall Association of Canada. Well, I did what any self-respecting member of the Hunter family would do, I ditched Joanne and Gil at my parents and my father and I headed back to find out what was going on.

At the top of the hill we were warmly greeted by John, the leader of the seminar. Their goal was to build an arch from an old stone pile, and whatever other rocks they could gather from the pasture. The seminar was full but we were invited to stick around and observe, and if we had any questions, please feel free to ask.

John proved to be an excellent teacher and just watching, asking a few questions and taking it all in I learned more that afternoon than I have in all the various books I’ve read. I’ve been thinking of building the bottom 4’ of the south wall of Gil’s room from stone, and now I feel confident that I can get it done. Building a 12’ x 4’ x 18” wall would add 4400 pounds of thermal mass to the house, thermal mass that would receive heat from then sun, the new wood stove, and the radiant floor.

I was great to watch them build this because it was exactly the same kind of stone that we have here. The books tend to deal with nice easy to work with stones like sandstone, limestone, and shale. That’s nice but what we have is fieldstone, granite and other difficult to split stones.

The finished the arch late in the afternoon and it’s a fantastic sight. It looks like it’s been there forever, I suspect a lot of locals will be doing a double take as they head up the highway wondering why they’ve never seen that before.

The Dry Stone Wall Association of Canada

Posted by: Glen: July, 17, 2005

Woodstove - A decision has been made….

We placed an order for a Morso 4600 woodstove today. Hopefully we’ll have it installed by the end of the month. Because, you know, it’s important to have a brand new woodstove in August.

Posted by: Glen: June, 24, 2005