The Straw House Blog

Coboconk House

I spent a good portion of the week helping build a straw bale cottage up on Balsam Lake. The property is owned by a lovely lady named Gerarda Schouten, a retired schoolteacher who has decided to make the lake her home.

It’s a nice simple design with a bright and airy main floor for Gerarda, with a deck and straw bale sunroom, and a walkout basement with full guest quarters.

We’ve been doing bale work for the last two weeks, stacking, stuffing and stitching, work that I didn’t get to do much of on my own house. When we were doing the bale work here I spent most of my time dealing with the building inspector, the roof, the architect, and the infinite number of other questions that cropped up. It’s a running joke with Pete and Tina that the owners stack the first bale because they might not get a chance to stack another! At least not until the next day when things have generally calmed down. Next week they’ll be plastering and I’ll be out there again for a couple of days, baling isn’t easy work but plastering is HARD work.

A reporter came out from the Lindsay Daily Post to do an article on Gerarda and her new home.

But what you really want are the pictures… right?

     

Posted by: Glen

August, 20, 2004

Mission Green Part Two

I wanted to wait to post this until after Garry had his update done on the Mission Green site so that I didn’t “scoop” him. It’s a nice article with some really nice pictures, obviously the secret to good interior shots is to take them when it’s raining outside.

Around 2pm, right as a huge thunderstorm hit, the convoy rolled up. I grabbed all of our umbrellas and headed out to greet everybody. Once safely inside we gathered in the front and Garry told everyone about Mission Green and some of the goals they hoped to achieve, and a bit about his own history.

With that squared away he proceeded to ask a series of well thought out and focused questions about all aspects of the house. I highlight that because I get asked a lot of stupid questions about the house and so it’s a pleasure to answer smart ones. Let that be a warning to you if you’re coming on the House Tour! Not a single one of them cracked a Three Little Pigs joke, they were a class act. Pete Mack and Simon Boone were there as well and both had to field questions on the off-grid system and the straw bale structure.

After touring around the house we headed outside to check out the trucks. We largely ignored the big Yukon SUV since the only difference between it and the regular one is that its engine has been tweaked to run the special 85% pure cellulose ethanol made by Iogen. Nice, and certainly a very definate improvement to what would normally be a very non-Green vehicle. But what really interested all of us rural geeks was the hybrid Silverado pickup. You can find out all you need on their site, I’m not a GM PR person, but the feature that really thrilled all of us was the two exterior 120V 15A outlets in the pickup bed. The truck can act as a generator, it has an inverter and will feed 120V off the batteries until they get low and then it will start the engine (!) to charge them back up! I wish we’d had that when we were building the house, no more listening to the generator idling all day.

All in all it was a very nice visit, I really enjoyed meeting Garry and his team, and I’m pleased and honoured that they chose to visit us.

     

Posted by: Glen

August, 30, 2004

Check Us Out at Talk Energy

We’re the featured story at Talk Energy right now.

     

Posted by: Glen

September, 03, 2004

LED Lights

Inspired (some might say shamed) by the attention from MocoLoco I have built a page devoted to my LED lights.

Included is information on the lights, a bit about how they were designed and built, and in the future info on how you might buy one of these lights, if you were so inclined.

     

Posted by: Glen

September, 04, 2004

Paudash Lake House

I returned last night from four days working with the gang from Camel’s Back on a house on Paudash Lake, just south of Bancroft. In addition to Pete and Tina, Stephen, Lesley, Ryan and new guy Paul were also out. It’s a neat house, most of the wood was cut from the property, and it’s built with hemp bales. It’s first time that I’ve worked on a house built with hemp bales. They’re a pain in the ass. The hemp doesn’t rip, it’s bleeding hard to pierce them and they dull any blade. I think I’ll stick with regular straw for my next project.

There’s a neat/strange story behind the house though. The house was designed to fit on a pre-existing foundation. Imagine that you own some land. An acreage even, and one day you head out for a walk on that land and find the very definate beginnings of a house being built, on your property. That is what happened to the people Regis bought her land from. It seems that several brothers owned the land next door, and one of them decided to build himself a house. So he put in a foundation, a well, and a septic system. Apparently the brother didn’t have an accurate survey (or perhaps any survey at all). When this geographical faux-pas was brought to his attention his reaction was ... litigation - even after the actual owners offered to sell him the land at a very good price, even though he had already sunk so much money and effort into the property. He lost and Regis bought a piece of land with a foundation, a well, and a septic system. It’s a very nice piece of land with towering spruce trees and a view of the land to the east. The house will be off-grid, but I didn’t manage to get the details of the system.

     

Posted by: Glen

September, 19, 2004

Straw Bale House Tour

This Saturday October 2nd is the Second Annual Ontario Straw Bale Building Coalition Straw House Tour. We missed last year because Gil had just been born, so we’re excited to be taking part this time. The Tour runs from 10am to 4pm, rain or shine. Full details can be found at the OSBBC Tour page.

Peter Mack from Camel’s Back Construction,  Simon Boone and/or J.P. Pawlins from Generation Solar, Paul Dowsett from Scott Morris Architects, and my Mom and Dad, will all be at the house giving tours, answering questions and hopefully having a good time. If you’re in the area please drop on by and introduce yourself.

     

Posted by: Glen

September, 26, 2004

October Update

It’s been a pretty busy fall around here, we had the OSBBC house tour right at the beginning of the month, I’ve been very busy with various work projects and Joanne’s maternity leave has come to an end and she has returned to work.

Aside from my regular work (which has been going very well, thanks for asking) I just recently built a custom 6’ long version of my dining room light for Eurolite. I was somewhat apprehensive at first, I didn’t think it was going to come out very well, I was worried that the proportions would all be off, plus it would have to be hung from four wires rather than two. In the end though I was very pleased with the results, if I had enough plastic I would probably build another one for myself. There are some images of the custom fixture on the lights page.

The Tour

Given the weather (it poured rain most of the day) the tour went quite well. We had fewer people than we expected but still had around 75 people over the course of the day. Mom was on the door, Dad helped with tours, Simon and J.P. from Generation Solar, Peter Mack from Camel’s Back Construction, and Paul Dowsett from Scott Morris Architects were all answering questions, showing people around and handing out business cards by the fist-full. Surprising (to me anyway) was that the majority of people who came through the house had read the blog, many of them from the very beginning.

Afterwards we had a nice BBQ, Tina, Steven & Laurie & Malaika, and Regis (from the Paudash Lake house I worked on) all came by, a pleasant visit was had by all.

Final Grading

We have finally completed the final grading around the house, Eric was here last week and the week before dumping topsoil around the house and leveling it back out. The ICF"s are covered and the west and north sides are backfilled with topsoil. The east side of the house has been built up with gravel/sand from our pit - since we are building a deck on that side we didn’t see any point in buying topsoil.

The Floor

Dan Peel was here again working on the radiant floor system and it looks like we have finally got all of the kinks out of the system. We had been having a series of problems where the various aquastats on the hot water tank couldn’t read the temperature of the water inside the tank accurately and as a result the floor would rob all of the heat from the tank. This always seemed to happen right as we were about to shower and you wouldn’t find out there was no hot water until 5 minutes into the shower - and only then would the boiler come on. Over the course of last winter we also had two broken pumps and a malfunction in the boiler that kept it running for one month non-stop (before we clued in), these problems masked the underlying aquastat issues until spring of last year. But by then the sun was out more frequently so we decided to spend the summer thinking about the problem and Dan suggested drilling a hole through the side of the tank cover, through the insulation and placing a temperature prob right up against the stainless tank insert. That seems to have done the trick. We’ve had almost no solar gain for over a week now and the house has been quite comfortable. Thanks Dan!

Site Update

I recently purchased a Kill-A-Watt, which is a meter that shows how much power in Watts and Amps a device uses over time. It can also display Volt Amps (VA), Power Factor (PF), Kilowatt/Hours (KWH) and time (how long it has been plugged in). It has no data logging built in, while it is plugged it works, unplug it and it loses all data.

So I’ve been wandering around the house plugging all of my various tools and gadgets into the Kill-A-Watt and compiling a list. The list is ongoing but I have added in the values of the various lights around the house and posted it in the house section: Load Chart. As I measure more devices I will add them to the chart, right now it’s mostly just the power tools, and computers.

     

Posted by: Glen

October, 24, 2004

Northern Lights

Last night as I let the dogs out I noticed lovely shimmering curtains of colour in the sky. The Northern Lights were out. It’s only the second time on my life that I have seen them, and I got out my camera and tripod to take some pictures. These were mostly greens, with a touch of orange. Last year we got to see reds, which only occur at very high altitude and are rare.

Another benefit to living in the country, the light pollution is so bad in cities that few people ever get a chance to see the Northern Lights.

     

Posted by: Glen

November, 08, 2004

I’m Back!

Life, I’m afraid, has interupted the blog. Hopefully I’ll be getting back onto a regular posting schedule, but here’s a quick list of what been going on:

1. Mojo Productions Inc., (i.e. my company) has been pretty busy lately with several clients on the go. Mostly web page development but also some thin-client user interface design (which I really enjoy).

2. I’ve designed and built a bench and coffee table, plus new versions of the rod lights and some new lighting prototypes.

3. Gil is now 16 months old and he’s walking and (sorta) talking. Since I work from home I take care of morning and early evening daycare.

4. It has been a very cold winter here so far and I’ve had my trusty caulking gun out extensively sealing cracks - when it’s -35C it’s pretty easy to find the tiny gaps where the cold air is getting in! We’ve decided that a small wood stove is imperative for our house, but due to both financial and timing constraints that won’t be happening until the spring/summer.

5. While we have stopped giving tours of the house (for now) we have appeared in Private Power magazine and have been interviewed a couple of times for other publications.

6. Dad and I have been logging cedar out of the bush to use for decking as well as a some ash, maple and black cherry for future use. A bunch of the maple and ash is spalted and/or quilted which is both rare and quite lovely. Some the ash slab is destined for benches as is a fantastic 10” square maple beam that we cut.

     

Posted by: Glen

January, 30, 2005

The Coffee Table

I built our old coffee table one apartment and one house ago. As a first effort it wasn’t bad; wood legs on castors with a glass top and metal lower shelf. It was very early 90’s. But like many projects I never quite finished it, the glass was never firmly attached to the legs and could slide if bumped by a leg, a dog, or more recently (and dangerously) by an energetic and highly mobile toddler. Joanne decreed the old table dangerous and it was dismantled.

So I designed a new one. I’ve been toying with the concept of lighted furniture for a while now. I like the idea of creating small discreet sources of low light scattered around a room and using point sources where more illumination is needed (i.e. for reading). One method of doing that is embedding lights within furniture. In the case of this table the light is provided by two 1W LED’s. It shines both up and down. The light up is very pretty, but not particularly useful (you can’t read by it). The light down illuminates the bottom shelf, in our case the home of our stack of current magazines.

I’m fairly pleased with how it has turned out and for a prototype it’s pretty good. Right now it’s sitting in Eurolite’s showroom, so if you’re in Toronto you can go and check it out.

Right now I’m building new slabs for the table top, the current ones are cedar (not a great material for table tops - too soft), the new ones will be butternut. They will have an improved method of holding the light in place. I’m also ordering some flat low voltage wiring to use for the lights, which will allow me to run the wireing to the table, up the leg, and to the lights and have it almost invisible.

Update: Not to sound all, “You like me, you really like me!” but Land+Living (a design blog I enjoy) has some very kind words to say about the coffee table.

     

Posted by: Glen

January, 30, 2005