MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Winter 2020

36 Then the family created the walls using a clay/straw Larsen truss system. Mixing clay and chopped barley they filled forms with the mixture then waited for it to dry. All the forms were repurposed for the roof decking. “You put the frame up, put the clay in the wall,” he explains, “then you wait a year for the clay to dry. It sits and the moisture comes out of the clay and it slows down the drying process while the timbers cure. It’s a very old building process, the original people that know how to do it are no longer around. The straw has a capillary action; it breathes. Environmentally and healthwise it’s better for you.” The passive solar design uses a large 16x16ft wall of windows to heat in the winter, while in the summer months, when the sun is directly overhead, it stays in the shade remaining nice and cool. There is also a cook stove to supplement the solar heat, making the building lovely and warm. “Our cook stove has pipes on the back of it that hold a litre of water,” says the owner. “That pipe runs through the brick closet, keeping our winter clothes warm and dry. Working on convection the water circulates up into a 100 gallon tank and comes back again. For the heated floor, the water goes through a coil in that tank, to heat the house. The ambient heat in the summer still preheats the domestic hot water using no energy.” While the house is still on the grid, there was a lot of attention paid to making it an efficient dwelling and to using sustainable building materials. Many of the materials came from the property itself, or were salvaged. “I like to repurpose,” says the owner. “The clay is from the pond. The barley is from a few farms down, the wood is from here. The brick is from a schoolhouse in Flesherton.” The ground floor is 1575 square feet, with a couple spare bedrooms, some office space and a bathroom upstairs. There’s a three car garage that is as well-thought-out as the rest of the building. There is a ton of millwork and ironwork throughout the building all done by Dano Harris of Ceylon, Ontario. “It took us five years to build,” the owner says. “The first year was all building. Second year it was drying. Then we worked at our own pace brainstorming on details. It was a family project doing most of the work ourselves.” Walking through it’s easy to fantasize about building your own house like this. It’s obviously an ongoing labour of love. And without a doubt it takes a certain type of personality to succeed at it. “We like to work,” he adds. “We never stop.” But all that work has paid off in a beautiful house that will serve the family for generations. It is, without a doubt, more than just a building to live in; it’s a home in the true sense of the word. “You should take the ugliest part of your property and that’s where you should build. That way you get to look at the beauty of nature.” TOP & MIDDLE COLIN FIELD. BOTTOM SUPPLIED BY HOMEOWNER