Northern Utah Permaculutre Bed and Breakfast

My wife and I have decided to move into the very large 1927 craftsman home that I am restoring in northern Utah and run a B&B part time in order to teach permaculture to a wider audience.

I believe that the greenest homes are already built and can be modified to be more energy efficient and comfortable than a new one. I'm just going to start posting photos of the restoration and hopefully curious onlookers will ask questions, so these techniques can be applied to your own home, whatever the age.

The lot is nearly 1 acre.

This is what things were looking like in the fall.

Hugels on contour planted bird seed from the local feed store, carrots and parsnips from my garden, many wild collected natives, barley and 20 species of tree and shrub all edible/medicinal.

Looks great Bill, I am looking forward to watching your progress. Looks like you have a good start.

The original lime plaster was covered in white latex paint as well as everything else. This was removed by grinding with a diamond wheel on a 7" angle grinder. Super fun job; thanks Tommy!

All trim is original; painstakingly rebuilt by hand. Thanks Clair!

We are combining the latest in technology with historic best practices to provide optimal comfort with as low energy usage as possible. Solar thermal with Runtal flat panel radiators provide heat with a super hi-efficiency boiler for the coldest months.

Then there are low tech solutions to reducing energy usage like this water cooled walk-in refrigerator and wood/coal burning cookstove with hot water jacket.

Love it. I dont know enough about it to ask any good questions but will watch till I do. Once you move outside maybe I can contribute. Oh, will you put in a water feature in? I have a couple of old farm ponds I want to improve.
I have a partially built pole barn house. We heat with an old inefficient wood stove and have no solar or graywater systems. Will you put in graywater?

In one room, where the walls are window cavities, there was no room for insulation, so we used xps foam. I would rather use roxul comfort board, but I am having trouble getting it here. This is my favorite room though because the single hung windows all slide down into the wall for open air 180 degree views.

More pics. Every door and window has been rebuilt, not replaced. rebuild, don't replace old windows

Jennifer Smith wrote:Love it. I dont know enough about it to ask any good questions but will watch till I do. Once you move outside maybe I can contribute. Oh, will you put in a water feature in? I have a couple of old farm ponds I want to improve.
I have a partially built pole barn house. We heat with an old inefficient wood stove and have no solar or graywater systems. Will you put in graywater?

Hi Jennifer, thanks, I love it too!

We actually have already naturescaped the entire property. I like the Fukuoka style of natural farming, so it doesn't yet look like much, but in those weeds are an abundance of trees and shrubs that will mature into a food forest. On the north side of the house is the old garden that was totally hammered from deep tillage veg production, so we sheet mulched the entire area and just let it sit.

We dug a small pond that is fed by roof runoff through an underground pipe.

This project is "above board" aka permitted and inspected, so no greywater as it is not legal here in Utah. If this was a little lower profile and not permitted and inspected, then I would definitely be utilizing every water resource possible including greywater and composting toilets.

Some pics of the entertaining areas

WOW, what a great house! Looks like you have a big lot also. New ski area nearby so a good location for a B&B huh? Nice!

Have to be on the lookout for that other fireplace lion ?

Miles Flansburg wrote:WOW, what a great house! Looks like you have a big lot also. New ski area nearby so a good location for a B&B huh? Nice!

Have to be on the lookout for that other fireplace lion ?

Hey Miles, I just saw your comment, yeah we're lucky to have found this "diamond in the rough". They just don't build 'em like that anymore!

I don't like to ski at those places, but it's a great marketing point and they are developing a mountain bike trail system which as an ex semi-pro racer makes me happy.

I would love to find the other fireplace dragon, if anybody has one let me know!

The building inspector has given us the green light to seal up the walls, so here's a couple of pictures of the repairs. For a more in-depth look check out this thread Repairing-lime-plaster-walls

Stan "the man" Petersen came out to train us up in the new pozzolanic lime plaster being produced locally. It was really great to be taught by someone who has been at this for so long. Stan's stories of Bill Mollison living with him in the '70's and working with luminaries in natural building like Hassan Fathy, Wayne Bingham and the Steens kept us entertained while we learned.
I really like the light gray color of the new plaster and the way it sets before carbonating has reduced our workload by 1/2.

more latex be gone

Base coat of lime plaster

Spring is nearly here, but I'm still feeling greensick.

In the previous remuddle, one of the many hacks was the removal of a bearing wall without first supporting it. The weight of the second story wall and roof caused the ceiling in the kitchen to sink about 2". We jacked up the ceiling only about 1 1/4" installed a sampson post and set the ceiling and floor joists on the post to a height about 1" down from where it was originally. You really can't put the house exactly back where it was, because this would stress the rest of the framing, since the floor joists have stretched.
The post was created with green Ponderosa Pine and stained with a nearly black oil stain, rubbed on and then oiled with Rosewood oil applied with a brush.
In order to install the post, we cut out an opening in the side of the mortise for the tenon to slide into, saved the piece and reinstalled it after sliding the post into place.

We've been plastering like mad, getting color on some walls and shining up others.

When are you opening?

awesome thread!

Scrolling through quickly when I saw the first picture of the yellow paint I thought it was what you re-did! Uh, yeah... that looks nice. a little bit...

Great progress and thanks for sharing! I hope your project is a huge success!

Ann Torrence wrote:When are you opening?

Hi Anne,

We want to get the food systems online before opening, so it'll be a little bit as you can see. We are installing a commercial kitchen and the house has a formal dining room, so we want to provide dinners as well as the usual breakfast. Sooooo.... maybe next year, but probably the next after that. We will of course always have room for our Permies friends, so if you make it northwards, give a shout.

We are wrapping up the plaster work, here are some photos of the bathrooms.

A few recent photos.

After a year with no wi-fi, we finally installed an underground line in to the house, so I can upload pictures from the comfort of our newly lime plastered home. The gardens are coming along nicely and todays rains should give all the new transplants and seedlings a good push. I've underestimated the monumental task of turning around 50 years of neglect, but now that we are living here, our lives are normalizing.
Here are some older and then more recent pictures.

Here is the start of the Japanese timber frame style fence built from local Douglas Fir.

Once assembled, we burned the frame lightly; if you burn wood with a torch until it flashes, you will burn the sugars off and leave the lignins which are harder for fungi to digest. This extends the life of wood significantly if the wood can be protected from sun and water. We used Penofin liberally after a light sanding to reduce water uptake and protect from uv degradation.

Here's the finished product.

So did you get the inside all finished ? Good to see an update from you Bill.

Thanks Miles, it's good to be back on the web, I think I think better without it though.

Interior is 70% complete, I'll probably need another year since I've been contracting full time and I've been spending my free time getting the garden and orchard tight.

Here are some recent landscape photos.

I just found this thread ,

all I can say is impressive guys !

This looks lovely Bill....if I'm ever in Utah (!) I'll come and stay...and there'll be a cave waiting for you and your family if you're ever in Andalucia!
WHEN I figure out how to do the floor! x