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

The Bench

In the course of cutting and milling wood we have gathered a fair amount of very nice decorative slab. To us slab is wood that’s at least two inches thick and, for whatever reason, not worth milling into boards. Generally we leave the edges rough and I’ve been working on various methods of building legs to turn the slab into benches. Because the wood generally isn’t great quality, and most of it is cedar I’ve been thinking of building outdoor benches to scatter around the land anywhere I think a person might want to rest or where there is a particularly nice view.

When I had the metal legs made for the coffee table I also has some legs made up for a bench for my front hall. Like the coffee table the orginal front hall bench was made by me in a style I call modern plywood. But it was too small for the front hall. It had storage inside that was sufficient for dogs leashes and gloves when we lived in the city, but not the outdoor gear required for the country. It certainly couldn’t accomodate the vast vast plethora of footwear, gloves and hats that we have accumulated. So I moved it to the back door and built this bench.

The legs are stainless steel, welded, with a horizontal brace at the top. The slab is two inch thick cedar finished with multiple coats of spar varnish, to protect it from the sun. It has plenty of space underneath for boots and I’ll either buy or build a couple of nice open baskets for gloves, hats, etc. These legs are too expensive for me to use more than one set, though I could drive the costs way down by bending the steel rather than welding it, and moving to mild steel rather than stainless (though then I would have to worry about rust).

We have recently cut some ash, maple and black cherry hardwood. From that I have some very nice ash slab, and a maple beam with both spalting and quilting in the grain. I intend on doing some sort of George Nakashima/Brent Comber style piece with it, the form is nearly complete in my head, soon I’ll get it down on paper. No work will be done on this piece until the summer though, since the maple is still wet and heavy enough that two of us could barely move it.

Drying wood is starting to become a big concern for us, as hardwoods can require several years to dry outside on their own. There are numerous lumber yards and kilns around us but none of them will rent space, so it looks like one of the first summer projects (money permitting) will be a solar kiln and drying racks. Details, you can be assured, will follow.

Just in case that you’ve been worried that father’s been bored, what with not being here and working on my house all the time. Well you need not worry. He’s built himself an iceboat. The iceboat uses a windsurfer sail for propulsion, but that’s way too pedestrian for my Dad, he’s building a wing.

Posted by: Glen: February, 07, 2005

Winter 2005 - Part One: She’s So Cold

It has been, so far, an odd winter. We spent most of December with the temperature hovering down around -20C to -30C at night. Daytime highs could get up to -15C or -10C if we were lucky. The second half of January was warmer, and February, so far (again with the so far!) has been positively balmy with temperatures hanging around the 0C mark. When it gets down to -30C the windows get frost on the inside, the dogs don’t like to go out, the vehicles don’t like to start and you can get frostbite on exposed skin in minutes.

October, November and December were also dark, so dark in fact that we went nearly 100 days without a full day of sun. Fortunately they were pretty windy months since the generator broke (the pull-cord snapped) on December 24th and I couldn’t get it fixed until January 5th. We went more than 11 days with no generator in December that’s a very very long time.

Once the temperature gets below -10C you can actually feel a very light cool breeze coming off the windows as the cool air falls down the inside of the front windows. And here we enter into one the problems with our house. We wanted the windows, we love the windows, we bought the best windows we could find. But in the winter we have a love/hate relationship with our windows. The problem, in a nutshell, is that we have too damn many of them. When it gets really cold the windows allow the house to cool too quickly - windows after all, even really good ones, have a pretty low R value. As a result our floor system (which consumes a great deal of electricty, and propane) runs all the time on very cold cloudy days. The floor is unable to radiate heat as fast as we lose heat through the windows. This problem, we think, is a function of volume. The square footage of our house isn’t all that large (about 2000sq.ft. in the main house) but it is very tall, 17’ at the front down to 10’ at the back. We have a lot of volume. We use fans to push the hot air down, but the fans use electricity. What we need is a method of quickly adding some heat, without worrying about it radiating throughout the day. What we need is a wood stove.

When we designed the house we added a re-enforced pad in the centre of the living/dining room for a masonry stove. We have since learned that a masonry stove would likely have been a grave mistake. If you don’t know a masonry stove burns a certain quantity of wood very fast and very very hot. It has a great deal of mass (they’re made of stone or brick) that captures that heat, holds it, and radiates it throughout the day. In most cases this would be a splendid idea, however imagine in our house if you woke up in the morning and it was cold and cloudy, so you lit a fire and burned 50 pounds of wood in 30 minutes, the stove starts a radiating a lovely warm heat. And then the sun comes out. Initiate evacuation procedure!

So a wood stove. But now we get into some serious issues. Firstly we only like modern stoves. Modern stoves are almost all quite expensive. And European. Now expensive is unfortunate but we’re willing to save for the right stove, because we are going to be looking at this thing for years. But European, now that’s a problem. Canada is a pretty small market, and most European manufacturers don’t have Canadian distributers let alone local dealers. So now we’re looking at importing a stove, and moreover buying and importing a stove that we have never seen. All the stoves look real pretty in the pictures, but it’s kind of hard to get a sense of scale from a brochure. I think I’m going to end up making cardboard mock-ups.

The stoves we’ve been looking at are:

In all cases these stoves are meant to heat a space of aproximately 1000sq.ft. and burn very efficiently. That’s should be enough to heat the main common part of the house. We don’t care so much about spot heating the bedrooms since Joanne and I both prefer sleeping in a room that is on the cooler side.

Posted by: Glen: February, 13, 2005

Winter 2005 - Part Two: Hot Burrito #1

When it is sunny (in the winter) the house gets very warm. It has been sunny all day today and the inside temperature is 27C. It’ll probably get up to 28C before the sun goes down. Now as uncomfortable as 28C is (to us) one big benefit is that most nights we can carry that heat through to the enxt morning. In other words the floor system (which consumes a lot of electricity) does not have to come on. That said, a shading strategy is under development and will hopefully be put in place by next winter.

Opening windows isn’t really an option since that just brings cold air in along the floor. So your head stays hot and your feet get cold. Not to mention that we really don’t want to bleed off too much of the heat, since it will last over night and even into the next day.

This certainly isn’t the fault of the architect (though I don’t think he realized how hot it might get in here), since we wanted the wall of windows, and the high ceilings, but if we were doing it again I’m not sure that we would do things any different, we like the windows that much.

Here’s some pictures that show why.

Posted by: Glen: February, 13, 2005

Now in More Colours

I managed to get my hands on some more coloured acrylic tube and so I have a veritable bouquet of colours available for my lights. I managed to find some burgundy, blue and purple tubing. The stuff is hard to find in Canada because the demand is so low, these tubes were imported from the US, which is usually too expensive for me, but I piggy-backed on somebody else’s order.

In the works right now is a table lamp with multiple 1W LED’s. I’m trying to work out something where more lights can be easily added depending on lighting requirements. Of course lights could just as easily be removed, even moved between bases if you had multiple fixtures.

Posted by: Glen: February, 24, 2005

The Danes prepare to eat our lunch

WorldChanging has an excellent article on Denmark and its move into renewable energy on a grand scale.

In 1973, during the Yom Kippur war, Denmark was 98% dependent on foreign oil for its power. Today, thirty-two years later, the country derives 21% of its energy from wind and is a net exporter of energy.

They’re investing 10 billion dollars of R&D money into renewables over the next 10 years. And this, my frineds is where the rest of the world will be eating North America’s lunch in the decades to come, as oil gets more and more expensive more and more of our money will be going overseas not just to pay for oil, but to pay for any kind of alternative energy infrastructure as well. Meanwhile we drop another 100 million dollars trying to get another reactor working a the Pickering nuclear plant.

But the best part of the article, for me, was this quote from Svend Auken, a member of the Danish Parliament and former Minister for Energy & Environment:

Finally, he envisions the pathway to a bright green future, saying that �it need not be dull, it need not be boring, we don�t have to give up our lifestyle, we just have to be a little bit more smart about how we live.�

Amen brother.

Posted by: Glen: March, 22, 2005

Spring Redesign

Yup, I’m redesigning the site again.

Things will likely be a bit iffy over the next day or so, please bear with me.

Update: Well I think I’ve got most of the kinks worked out of the site. If you find anything please drop me an email. Otherwise… welcome spring!

Posted by: Glen: March, 31, 2005

More Publications

We’re going to be profiled in this Friday’s edition of the Globe and Mail. It’s the Architourist column, in the Real Estate section. ~~I’ll post a link when I have it.~~

We’re also in a recent book on Modern Straw Bale building/design, the book however is in German, so even when I get it, I’ll just be looking at the pretty pictures.

A review copy of the German book was sent to an Italian architecture magazine, and now they are working with SMA (the architects) on a feature article. They are working with SMA rather than us because they are a very technical magazine and are more interested in the engineering and architecture of the house than ‘our story’.

Posted by: Glen: April, 20, 2005

What’s happening this summer - inside

It’s going to be a busy summer.

Joanne is pregnant with #2, and so Gil is going to have to move out of the nursury, and into his own room. At the moment my office occupies the space that will be his room. The office has to go, the space needs walls, but before that the space needs a ceiling.

Here’s a view of the currrent floorplan along with notations.

The new office. Just a long slim desk along the back wall. Simple clean, and I’m still working out how to hide the cables and computers
Bedroom wall. This wall will be floor to ceiling bookshelves just like it’s opposite (bordering the master bedroom. The top area will be triangular pieces of sandblasted glass to let in light and maintain privacy.
Bedroom wall. This wall will be clad with panel or drywall on the bedroom side and T&G cedar on the living room side. It will be built to move to expand the size of the bedroom when the time comes to break it into two rooms.
Linen Closet. Lined with all of my leftover aromatic cedar
Bedroom Door. We’re going need to enforce some privacy soon.
Odd, there doesn’t seem to be a number six…
This space is currently the nursury, but it is plumbed to be an ensuite. When competition for the main bathroom gets too fierce, we get our own.
Walk-in closet. Lined with aromatic cedar. Staining is done, but it needs some trim and sliding doors.
Front hall closet. Lined with aromatic cedar, it needs sliding doors, and some better shelves for seasonal storage.

Before the walls for Gil’s room can be built a ceiling must be installed.

The Ceiling

Many ideas have been floated for how to cover our ceiling. Right now it’s just vapour barrier over insulation. Functional, but not terribly attractive.

Drywall: We hate drywall. And installing it after you’ve moved in? On 2000 sq/ft of ceiling, I don’t think so.

Plywood: Nice concept, and I’ve seen it done well, but a huge amount of work, very tough to get the edges clean and straight, and very hard for two people to do, over their heads day after day. I’ve undertaken a fairly exhaustive search for pre-finished T&G plywood, and well, it doesn’t seem to exist. I can get prefinished, but it’s VERY expensive. Or I can get T&G but it’s used for subfloors and is very rough.

Tongue and Groove Wood: Similar to what you’d use for flooring. It’s expensive if you buy pre-finished, but unfinished Western Red Cedar is not too bad. VERY nice looks, somewhat expensive. Now I’d rather use my own wood, but my cedar is way too knotty to use for a ceiling, not to mention that most of the cedar I have right now is slated to be used in decks. I have some maple, ash and black cherry, but nowhere near the quantities I’d need for the ceiling, and it won’t be dry for a couple of years if I don’t get a kiln built. Then there is the work involved in planing, jointing, routing and finishing 2500 sq/ft worth of hard wood. I don’t mind doing the work, but I don’t see having that kind of time in the forseeable future. As the old addage of freelance work goes, “You either have money or time. You never have both.”

What we’re concentrating on now is the back ceiling, the ceiling over the bedrooms and open area. The ‘hallway’ and gallery will likely be done the same way. But I have greater ambitions for the front part of the house. I thought I’d share a few of my inspirational images with you.

Oh man, what a ceiling. We can’t pull off something that daring, we don’t have the space to allow a drop like that, but I’m seriously thinking that a wave effect, done with straight boards could be very effective as well.

Eventscape makes cool tensioned fabric errr… things. Layered I think it would be very cool as a ceiling, but probably expensive.

Yes, that is industrial felt. Great because it’s rigid enough to hold a shape, and it absorbs sound. A big consideration when you’ve built a house that’s largely open concept, and more than somewhat reflective.

Posted by: Glen: April, 20, 2005

Globe and Mail Architourist Article

The article is here: Globe and Mail - The Architourist.

Posted by: Glen: April, 22, 2005

What’s happening this summer - Outside

Did I mention that it’s going to be a busy summer?

Last fall Dad and I logged a bunch of cedar trees from the west and south parts of the land. We’re lucky, in that we have good cedar, it often rots from the inside out, so you can’t tell how good a tree is until the tree is on the ground. The other problems with cedar are that it tapers considerably from bottom to top, and that there are lots of small branches that sprout out directly from the trunk all the way up the tree. This usually means that you have to clear around the base of the tree first before dropping it, both to have space to cut, and to ensure an escape route. I drop the trees, so I’m damn careful about making sure I have lots of space to run if the tree doesn’t drop in the right direction!

What we want from the cedar is mostly 2” thick boards. I’m hoping to build some decks around the house this summer. We don’t bother drying the cedar first, it dries very quickly in place with minimal cupping, and we use screws rather than nails to make later adjustments easier. In two years when it’s dried out in place, we’ll rent a floor sander and get rid of any cupping/bowing. We did that on Dad’s deck and it seems to have worked out just fine.

Here’s a sketch of the proposed decking:

Clicking on the image will bring up a larger version. As an added bonus there is a bunch of extra info on the sketch for those of you interested in the interior changes.

The deck across the front is largely cosmetic, as you wouldn’t want to sit on it, it would be much to hot and sunny for most of the year (reflection from the windows). The 12’x12’ area to the west is a small deck for the BBQ, and to sit and look out over the forest, we may also screen in this deck. The large east deck is the main sitting portion as it has the best view, and is sheltered from most of the summer sun. We aren’t big fans of sitting out the sun. We’re also lucky in that we get a bit of a breeze around the house year-round, and that helps keep the bugs away in spring/summer.

At this point we have probably 1/4 of the wood that we will needs for these decks, and as a result, they may get built in stages. Over the next couple of weeks Dad and I will be dropping another six cedars (at least), as well as some more standing dead Black Cherry, and at least one standing dead Ash. The Black Cherry isn’t very large, it’s hard to get much more than 2 or 3 inch boards out of it, but it’s a very interesting wood, and I think I may use it to replace the cupboard and drawer faces in the kitchen.

The other big job I’d like to get started on this summer is the barn. The original barn collapsed a couple of decades ago, and we’ve pulled a great deal of the lumber, and farm machinery, and cow bones, and old straw, and…. Yep, it was pretty bad. Unfortunately once all that stuff was removed it allowed the weeds, shrubs, and even trees a chance to set roots. Something must be done. The plan is to bulldoze all of the old timbers into a hole on the other side of the driveway where they can continue to rot in piece. The part that is currently standing will be torn down and rebuilt as a shed. Cheap and cheerful, will be the name of the game. With a low roof line that matches the look of the house without obscuring the view. I’d also like to clean off the top of the walls and pour a new concrete cap to prevent further deterioration. Right now water is getting into the tops of the walls each fall, freezing in the winter and spalling off the top layers of stones. I don’t intend to re-point the whole walls, I have neither time nor inclination for that, I only hope to slow their inevitable collapse.

Posted by: Glen: April, 23, 2005