Home
Extreme Living: How about a life of sunshine and straw?
By Ken Evans
Jul 10, 2006, 22:32

(NC)-Lots of people talk about how they'd love to build an energy-efficient, solar-powered home in the country some day. Few manage to complete the project with style, elegance and the kind of attention to quality than Glen Hunter and Joanne Sokolowski.

When Hunter and Sokolowski traded the bustle of their Toronto lifestyle for a place in the country, they were determined to build a durable, energy efficient straw bale home using expert input and leading-edge technologies.

The first thing you need to understand is the home's energy systems. The site is 1,000 metres from the nearest power lines, but that doesn't interfere with Hunter and Sokolowski's modern lifestyle. A 1kW SouthWest Wind Power H80 wind turbine and an array of photovoltaic panels deliver electricity to a bank of eight, deep-cycle 1,100 amp-hour Surrette batteries, wired in series to create a 48-volt DC power supply. An inverter changes this into 110 volt AC power that's fed into a conventional breaker box and wiring system that extends throughout the house. The batteries are stored in a ventilated box to safely deal with the hydrogen off-gassing that's produced while charging the lead-acid batteries.

Domestic hot water is heated in two glycol-charged rooftop panels that capture sunlight over a 64 square foot area. Space heating is mostly solar, too, thanks to the south- facing window wall built into this super-insulated, straw bale structure.

Straw bales were used for infill material within wood frames. Interior and exterior surfaces of the straw bale walls on the Hunter/Sokolowski home are plastered with two coats of stucco cement, creating a protective layer between one- and two-inches thick. For esthetic reasons, the interior plastered wall surfaces have a finish coat of lime mixed with marble dust. Wood frame interior partition walls are covered with tongue-and-groove boards milled from site-felled trees, and others are clad in barn board reclaimed from a tumbledown barn on the property. "There's also some drywall in the back rooms and en suite, but we hate it and try to pretend it's not there," says Hunter.

"We're doing things like using LED lights and putting all our appliances and electronics on switches to eliminate phantom electrical loads caused by transformers and adaptors."

Full story, more extreme homes, and a chance to win $5,000 at www.homesandcottages.com.

- News Canada

© Copyright by EveningsNews.com