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

We’re in!!

The Hunter’s have entered the forest.

One 14” U-Haul, 1 Ford Focus wagon, a Nissan Pathfinder, and a VW Beetle, brought all of our stuff from the city. Big thanks to Neil, Ian and Susan, who all provided a bunch of help and heavy lifting to get us in.

The kitchen has no cabinets, we can’t find all of the hardware for the office desks, and our clothes are hanging from a wire, but we’re so so happy.

Here’s some pictures for ya’.

Posted by: Glen: May, 25, 2003

Fire

One of the concerns that people have about straw bale homes is the issue of fire. We can now address that concern with actual experience.

At about 3:00pm this afternoon, our generator, which rests on the ground under the eaves just outside the utility room, exploded. We have no idea why, Dad was on the other side of the house and heard it stop, he thought I’d turned it off, then a little later he heard a BOOM. Around that time I was out walking the dogs, I heard the boom and thought it was hunters, shooting near the house, I ran toward the house in a rage. Then I saw the smoke.

The generator was burning, flames were running up the stucco, engulfing the window and reaching up into the soffits. The ground all around the house is still littered with straw - why worry, it was gonna be buried next week - and some of it started to burn. Some nearby bales were smoking fiercely but weren’t actually burning. That’s generally what happens to bales, because they are densely packed they don’t burn, they smoulder.

I ran into the house, yelling, and grabbed a fire extinguisher, Dad was trying to hook up the hose. I aimed the extinguisher at the generator and let it rip. Then I sprayed up across the wall and over the window. The fire dropped considerably, but the gas tank blew. I ran inside looking for the other extinguisher. Passing Dad with the now spraying hose, I yelled at him that it was a gas fire and to concentrate on the straw. Running out with the second extinguisher I used half of it on the generator, and sprayed some on the wall just in case.

Dad was spraying the straw but the the water stopped. I grabbed a shovel and sort of dragged and rolled the generator away from the wall. Then we started shovelling burning straw away from the house. When Dad and I tried to drag the bales away they broke up, then they started to burn. Once the sheaves are loose they burn quite well. We got them well away from the house and shovelled sand over the sheaves to smother them.

In the end the generator is toast, we lost one layer of outside stucco, the window blew, the soffits are bent and damaged but the wall is perfectly sound and there is no structural damage of any sort. If it had been a stick frame house…. I’d rather not think about what could have happened. We also lost our phone lines and something is wrong with the pump.

I cannot describe the sensation of seeing part of your house engulfed in flames, just four days after you’ve moved in. I was shaking for a half hour afterwards, just coming off the adrenaline.

Once I calmed down, I went and took some pictures.

Posted by: Glen: May, 29, 2003

No more safety net

We’ve got our phone and water (thanks Simon!!) back. The phone line was fixed with a quick underground splice, and Simon fixed the pump by turning it off, and then on again. Which, I would like it noted, Dad and I both did several times over the previous 24 hours, but apparently not with the years of experience, and skill that Simon alone possesses. Now we’re coming to terms with having to keep a very close eye on our energy consumption since we don’t have a generator to fall back on anymore.

Yesterday was pretty interesting, since it had been cloudy the day before, and yesterday was cloudy and rainy, our battery voltage was dropping slowly as the day wore on. We had friends over and with just the iPod and stereo running we were drawing one or two amps. But for most of the day we were only producing

two amps from the solar panels. By dinner time the battery voltage had dropped down to about 46.5 volts. Our low voltage cut off is at 43 volts, that’s when the inverter shuts down to protect the batteries from damage due to excessive discharge. 43 volts is a pretty big buffer zone, and we could probably let it drop down to 40 before we did any damage to the batteries, but while we learn I prefer to play it safe.

We got through the night, and woke to a beautiful sunny day. Right now the batteries are charging at 8 amps and we’re up to 50.5 volts of charge (full charge is around 54 volts). We’ve also done two loads of laundry, which we felt safe doing, since it’s supposed to be sunny for the next three days. Since we have no dryer it’s all hanging in the gallery to dry. At this time of year our peak electrical production time is between 10:30am and 3:30pm. In that period we seem to hold a steady 8-10 amps depending on haze. Our record so far is 11 amps, but that was on a super cold February day, with a piercingly clear blue sky. In February you only get about four hours of useful sunshine, total, so that peak is pretty short term.

Right now the solar hot water system is also running full tilt, and the return water temperature is 70C (170F). More than hot enough for domestic hot water. We’ve noticed that the boiler rarely comes on anymore, even though it’s still restricted to only operating every other hour. I’ve set the thermostats down to 15C so the radiant floor system will only come on if it gets fairly chilly.

We’ve got all of the computers, appliances, and stereo on switched power bars. The problem with all of these devices in an off-grid home is that they present phantom loads of one sort or another. What does that mean? Well many appliances, VCRs, stoves, microwaves, etc, have clocks built into them, these clocks are always on, and always draw a little power. TVs have electronics to keep the picture tube pre-heated, this makes the TV come on quicker when you push the ON button, the same circuitry exists some of my stereo components. Individually these loads are very small, but when you add them all together they are much more significant, they also conspire to keep the inverter out of search mode. When the inverter is on it uses about 10 watts.

But the big surprise for us the the sheer number of things that we own that require chargers. Cordless phone, iPod, digital camera, laptop, cordless tools, cellphone… yikes!! So when we woke up today I plugged in all the chargers to get everything topped up. The benefit to all these devices of course, is that yesterday I could use my computer, and tools without effecting the batteries. The cordless phone though, is a write-off. It doesn’t seem to hold any kind of charge, so my original idea of just plugging it in when the phone rings doesn’t work. This is a problem because we only have one working corded phone, so when it rings you have to jog to that one phone.

On Friday the insurance adjuster came out with two contractors to look at the damage done by the generator. They’re going to replace the soffits, plaster, window, flashing, window bucks, and the portion of the ICF foam that melted, but they are not going to replace the generator (I’m not sure why, I’m going to get that clarified). We will be approaching the manufacturer because the beast is still under warranty, but I just have a feeling that an excuse will be made not to warranty it. We certainly can’t afford to buy another right now, so we really will be flying without a net. And you know what? I’m kind of excited at the idea.

Posted by: Glen: June, 01, 2003

The Tower Part One: Erection

We could not have asked for a better day to raise the tower. 22 degrees, nice breeze, warm sun and clear blue skies. The breeze helped keep the black flies and deer flies away, mostly.

Simon and J.P. from Generation Solar were here to provide the know-how, my father, and myself to help. It took us four trips up the hill with the truck to carry all the pipe and tools. We had seven lengths of schedule 40 pipe (from Turkey, oddly enough), two at 22 feet, five at 18 feet. Five of the pieces were for the tower proper, and two were for the Gin pole. It turned out we had to clear a bunch of brush to make way for the guy wires. You try to be green and you still end up cutting down trees!

It took us from 10am to 5pm to assemble, raise and tension the tower properly. Next week we’ll lower the tower and attach the wind generator. Then the real fun begins.

Rather than try and explain the whole process I have annotated the pictures. Enjoy.

Posted by: Glen: June, 06, 2003

The Tower Part Two: Turbine

It’s up. J.P. flipped the switch at 5:00pm last evening and we started generating power. There wasn’t really much wind, so we weren’t generating very much power, but it was very gratifying none-the-less. We got a bit more wind later that night and I stood outside for a while, and when it’s really spinning you can just barely hear the turbine down at the house. Unfortunately there is no meter of any sort on the wind generator controller box in the house so I have ordered a separate meter to track the wind power.

The cable that runs from the tower to the house has three 2 guage aluminum wires: a positive, negative, and neutral line, each consisting of five strands. The entire cable is about 1” in diameter. Dad and Simon set the spool (of 650’) up on blocks so that it could unwind as they pulled. Then the dragged the cable through the bush behind the house, across the little valley, and up the steepest part of the back hill. I helped for the last little bit, then helped pull an extra twenty feet through from the house. Seriously hard work. We had exactly enough wire, barely a foot to spare. When Eric comes to put in the septic bed (next week) he’s going to bury the cable.

While Dad and Simon ran the cable, J.P., Jason, and I made some adjustments to the tower. Two of our anchors weren’t lined up properly and we needed to add an adjustable turnbuckle to allow us to drop the tower, when the lines are tensioned. By the time we had that done Simon and Dad were back and we all started working on attaching the generator, running the wire up the tower, and attaching the junction box at the bottom of the tower.

While we raised the tower, Dad and Simon went back down to the house and started working on the inside wiring. And then the yell came from below: “Turn off the brake!”

Posted by: Glen: June, 11, 2003

The big tall new toy

Spent the day working on a job for a client, but still ran into the back room every hour to check on the wind generator, batteries, and charger. For the first part of the day we had both sun and wind, but as of yet we still don’t really know how much power we’re getting off the wind generator at any given time. Dad hooked my multimeter up to the DC outputs on the controller box so we can see how many volts we’re getting, the high was around 57VDC, and the average, seems to be in the 50VDC range. But it’s not just the volts that are important, it’s the watts, and both rise and fall according to the wind speed.

We’ll learn, and we’ve got a new metering system coming very soon.

Took the dogs for a nice long walk around the land tonight, beautiful night, not too many bugs, and everything is green green green. ‘Course I just walked around looking up at the tower, ‘cause it’s the cool new toy.

Oh, and I took the camera.

Posted by: Glen: June, 12, 2003

I’m still here…

Sorry about the break there. Things got busy work wise and I loaned my camera out so I didn’t even have any new pictures from around the house.

Eric has arrived though, and so big things are afoot. Eric is the excavator, he’s going to be doing the final grading around the house, installing the septic bed, and right now, he’s digging the trench for the wind generator cable. It’s quite the trench. It’s about 3 feet deep, 2 feet wide and runs 680 feet from the top of the back hill all the way down to the house. The trench is dug, and the wire’s down in it, tomorrow we’ll back fill the whole thing. First we dump in about half the dirt then run a line of trench tape down, the tape lets future diggers know that there’s a buried cable in place and to beware. Then we fill the rest.

And Eric has just returned, so I have to go work. Here’s the pictures from today and I’ll post more tonight or tomorrow.

Posted by: Glen: July, 03, 2003

More trenching

We got the trench filled in today. Tomorrow we start on the septic bed.

I’m having a hard time deciding if the +31C (+38C with the humidex) right now is worse than the -20C (-30C with the windchill) we had six months ago. Of course there weren’t any Deer flies out then…

I’m going into town tonight to see Tina’s band play. They’re called BobCajun - guess what kind of music they play. My feet are killing me though, I’ll probably skip the dancing.

Posted by: Glen: July, 04, 2003

The barn comes down

We pulled the last part of the barn down today. It took quite a bit of doing. Despite its lean it was quite sturdy. We finally got the last section down by pulling with the bulldozer.

We’ve been held up a bit with our other stuff though. The septic system isn’t going to be done until sometime next week—if we’re lucky. And we’re picking up our kitchen cabinets on Tuesday.

Here’s the barn pictures, plus some views of our new grading around the front of the house.

Posted by: Glen: July, 11, 2003

Massive Update Part One: The BBQ

The house is officially broken in, we have had our first party. Friends and family, city and country, everyone came out for an evening of house tours and BBQ. Special thanks go out to my Mom and Dad who helped us paint and clean to get ready, and to Phil who ably handled the BBQ.

Here are some pictures from the night.

Posted by: Glen: July, 27, 2003