Today is the day I'm finally beginning a written and visual account of the past four years of learning, labor, and personal growth I've undertaken through the construction of a home for my family on the former (and someday restored!) prairie and oak savanna of rural south-central Minnesota. Placing the photos and thoughts into an understandable and somewhat organized format will be a wonderful and challenging
experience for me and I hope that I can be helpful to anyone else who is considering or already working on a similar
project. Also, along the way I'm sure that many of you will offer lots of great tips and advice that will help bring this project to a successful conclusion, so thanks in advance!
Some very quick background information and then on to the pictures!
After college and a couple seasons of running a packing line at an
apple orchard I decided that the quickest way to get back on the
land and doing something that I truly cared about was to join up with my family's farming operation and begin transforming a small acreage using
permaculture principles. The farmhouse on site was moved here in the 1960's, rather hastily judging from how some things were done. It's pretty inefficient, facing the wrong direction for
solar gain, and just poorly arranged. My wife and I also suspect that mold growth in it is contributing to health problems for some of us. So after the first winter here we began the planning process for the construction of a new house.
I had been to a couple of talks put on by Roald Gunderson of Whole
Trees and was impressed by his techniques and progress of designs. I decided to ask for his help with the house design and he accepted. After a couple of face to face visits and probably hours of phone conferences we finally had design everyone was happy with. I'll get into more details later but for now I'll simply list a few of the major goals and considerations:
- It needed to be highly
energy efficient to minimize heating requirements during the cold winters here while staying cool through summer heat waves as well.
- The overall plan needed to be accepted by the main occupants. (my wife and myself, as well as our two boys) Also large
enough to accommodate possible extended family, visitors, and future home-based business.
- While this isn't the greenest house ever I wanted to avoid as much plastic as possible and eliminate any toxic or off-gassing products. Natural materials were always preferred, but since I'm doing most of the work myself, time saving alternatives were considered.
- The house
should be a showplace for what's possible without a lot of extra work or expense in terms of aesthetics, energy savings, and living-in quality.
The last consideration was very important to me since my aim is to improve the quality of life for those living here through building up the community in terms of self-reliance and co-dependance while preserving and improving the natural resources that are literally being slowly eroded away. Folks tend to be very conservative here so I didn't want to build anything too "weird" or small, since "normal" homes around here tend to be fairly large. I've realized that I'll get a lot more done towards my goals and vision if I can somehow persuade others to find better solutions to problems on a
local level.
Here's a reply I recently made in a form attempting to explain some of my decisions in greater detail:
https://permies.com/t/20964/green-building/material-ceiling#275223
Anyway, enough rambling! On to the pictures! I'll try to get something put on here every day at least for the next 5 days or so while the weather stays cold and damp. Enjoy!