Nine years ago, I built a timber-framed, strawbale-insulated, earth-sheltered, and off-grid cabin in a lovely little valley two miles off the Mississippi near Bad Axe, Wisconsin.

Though I now chase my 3 and 5 year old kids around an old four-square in La Crosse, I still escape to my cabin whenever I can. The below paragraphs tell you the story of what I built, how I built it, and what kind of environmental systems I integrated with this this unique property.

Located in the historic valley of Battle Hollow, two miles east of the Mississippi in southwest Wisconsin, is a strawbale home I built in 1999 on 6.25 acres heavily wooded with mature maple and oak. This is an off-grid property, powered with eight, 100-watt solar panels, and uses both propane and wood-fired backup heat to compliment the incredible passive solar capacity of this home. Energy avoidance is maintained through superefficient appliances and compact fluorescent lighting. A strong, year round stream flows 500’ through southern edge of the acreage, and the hill behind the home provides two other equally productive feeder springs into the main stream. The internal footprint for the living quarters measures 24’ by 16’, and has two 8’ by 16’ lofts on the east and west sides; an additional 10’ by 20’ greenhouse forms the southern side of the main house. The uncompleted addition adjacent to the west side of the house measures 25’ by 16’, and is already framed to support an earthen roof with a walkway designed to tie in to little balcony above the deck of the main house. An 8 x 12 tool shed sits on the east side of the house. This is a great getaway cabin for the environmentally conscious, or for someone who wants to live as I did with a light footprint in the beautiful setting of southwestern Wisconsin.

This house was designed by local architect and environmental home-building pioneer, Roald Gundersen, of Roald Gundersen Design, http://www.roaldgundersen.com/ from nearby La Crosse. Roald is a good friend who helped me build the house, and knows it inside and out. I encourage you to visit his web site to learn more about round wood timber-framing techniques, and to review his gallery of work.

Roundwood and squared timbers frame the internal bones of the house underneath an exoskeleton of 18-inch thick plastered strawbales. This is an exceptionally sturdy and well-insulated home. The logs used in Gundersen’s roundwood design concepts were harvested off the land and tied in with repurposed 8 and 6-by Amish barn timbers. A bale-insulated foundation (shallow, frost-protected slab design) lies beneath the finished floor consisting of quartersawn heart pine milled from 150-year-old wood bought from a local timber salvage dealer. The trim around doors, windows, and the siding for the greenhouse and earth-sheltered back end of the house were milled from century-old Douglas fir wine tank staves. The beeswax used to seal the tank staves this wood was milled from still serves as a sealant against the elements, and provides a nice chocolate contrast to the golden hue of the sand used in the finish plaster of the house (mined locally in nearby Viroqua). 7/8” thick marble planking rescued from the local university serves as the hearth for a Vermont Castings heat-stove, bookshelves, and the kitchen countertop. 18” thick strawbales insulate the floor, walls and ceiling. The roof is framed in a 1:3 shed pitch design over 5/8” decking. A two-inch air-gap provides ventilation between the roof bales and decking supporting the metal roof, facilitating evaporation of condensation. Roofing felt covers the roof deck, and on top of which a metal roof sheds the elements. The gutters channel rainwater into subsurface drain tile around the perimeter of the house and the addition, which in turn channels water away from the structure.

An oval-shaped earth-sheltered addition adjacent to the main house is intended to serve eventually as guest quarters, or as an artist’s studio. I have not finished this project. The slab foundation, however, is plumbed into the graywater system. 250 square feet of 3/4" pex tubing runs through the internal footprint of the slab to provide in-floor radiant heat. Numerous poles along the roofline support the green roof this addition is intended to have. Next to the hot tub is a good supply of limestone rock the buyer(s) can use for raised beds, stepping stones, or for whatever purpose they desire. For now, the addition serves as a great, open-air site for shelter against the elements for building/carpentry projects.

The open-floor layout inside the main house consists of a kitchen, living area, a small dining room (or office) and a walled-in bathroom on the first floor. The bathroom has a Sun-Mar NE composting toilet, a rescued 5-foot clawfoot bathtub with shower conversion and a sink. Two 8 by 16-foot lofts with generous head clearance flank the east and west sides of the house upstairs, with a catwalk accessing both lofts. A DC-controlled overhead ceiling fan serves to stimulate ventilation in the open bay between the lofts, facilitating ventilation in general. An Aquastar 125S tankless hot water heater located in the greenhouse provides hot water on demand to both the bathroom and kitchen. This particular Aquastar is the model designed for passive solar hot water collection—something that can be placed in the second tier of the greenhouse. Other appliances include a Vermont Castings propane-fired heat-stove, propane-fired Servel refrigerator and cooking stove, washing machine and dryer, an additional Aquastar in the utility room (for the washer and the additions in-floor radiant heat), a utility room propane heater, and a water-free urinal. The property is also already wired for broadband internet (with cat-5 cable) and cable TV & telephone. There is a great little swing set in the cleared, park-like area below the house and just across the stream, made of rot-resistant black locust, which will last far longer than treated pine found at the home supply stores.

At every turn when building the house, I used non-toxic finishes and non-formaldehyde-based products. These include non-toxic floor and wall finish sealants, and a determination to not use building products such as oriented-strand board for 4 x 8 decking, choosing instead to use agri-board (compressed straw) for cabinetry and other purposes. I tend toward allergies, and I never had a problem when living in this house.

This two-story home has a 200 square-foot greenhouse on the southern side, and a 350 square-foot utility room in the back. The utility room is earth-sheltered up to eight feet, capitalizing on geothermal heating and cooling to modulate seasonal temperatures. The passive solar gain from the greenhouse alone will heat the main house up to the mid-seventies in mid January, when the air temperature outside is below zero. The greenhouse can be accessed from the main house, close to the kitchen, where one can retrieve a pepper in December to throw in the pan at dinner time. Recycled storm windows are used in conjunction with a masonry trombe wall to separate the main house from the greenhouse and to modulate temperatures seasonally in consonance with cross-ventilating windows on the east and west sides of the house and the vents along the roofline of the greenhouse. The upper level of the greenhouse can be used to start plants in February-March; in time for planting in the four raised bed gardens in front of the house (two more raised-beds are located opposite the driveway). An overhead ceiling fan on the ceiling destratifies the air between the two lofts on down to the living room directly below. An attractive Vermont Castings 'fake' wood stove provides backup heat during the winter months. It’s LP-gas fed and you have to look twice to see that it's not actually burning wood.

The house collects spring water from the year-round stream meandering 500’ along the southern frontage of the 6.25 acreage. Mature red oaks and maples grow all along the hillside behind the cabin, and heavily forests the hillside and adjacent valley to the north and west of the house. The open field between the year-round stream and the valley road is a nicely maintained area for cookouts, and a playground for the little ones. It's one of the nicest acreage plots in the valley, certainly with the most year-round spring water. Two year-round feeder springs flow into the main stream. I've built a small spring house over one of the feeder springs, where you can keep milk, wine, butter & whatever chilled. My second feeder spring supplies a water ram that pumps fresh water to the house (keeps a 65-gallon holding tank filled). There are two more feeder springs that can be improved for use as desired. Tapping into one of the feeder springs 250 feet from the house is a water ram that pumps water up to a 65 gallon holding tank in the utility room; from there, a DC-powered Shurflo pump primes a 42-gallon pressure tank, providing between 35-55 psi for household water requirements at the tap. I’ve had the spring water tested for impurities, and it is pure—drank it unfiltered for a year with no problem. Just to be safe, though, I have installed a charcoal filtration system underneath the kitchen sink for dedicated drinking water purposes.

The graywater from the kitchen and bathroom is circulated through a sand filter in the greenhouse. From there it follows a 30-foot route along the perimeter of the greenhouse underneath the growing beds, which in turn evapotranspirates much of the water through the plant growth; the remainder filter drains outside and through three of the four raised bed gardens in front of the house. All blackwater is contained and evaporated through the Sun-Mar NE composting toilet. The building permit authorized for the property was granted after coordinating with the Vernon County Zoning and the Madison Private On-Site Wastewater Treatment System (POWTS) regulatory office in 1999, which approved the graywater design. The building site was also approved for a holding tank, which I’ve never installed, choosing instead to go the graywater route. For those prospects interested in this property that choose and want to use a graywater system, it is important to be prepared to maintain it, and to use only biodegradable products. The house is priced lower than its appraised value to accommodate those who want to install a holding tank in lieu of using the graywater system.

Eight, 100-watt Siemens solar panels feed a battery bank of 12 Trojan deep-cycle 6V batteries (purchased in Nov '04). Two inverters supply modified sine-wave (Trace 2424) and pure sine-wave (Exceltech 1100) AC into the house. I've run everything from a laptop to a concrete mixer off this system. I also have two generators (300 and 400 watt) that provide backup power when a string of cloudy days occurs. But it's all about how much electricity you need and one's lifestyle. For those interested in modifying the system into a utility intertie, a power pod for the local grid exists right across the road.

The six foot hot tub requires about 2.5 loads of wood over the course of 3 hours to heat 50-degree spring water up to 105-110-degree soaking temperature. A gasoline-powered water pump is included to pump water from the spring box up to the hot tub; takes about 45 minutes to fill. This hot tub is phenomenal on a chilly night with a glass of wine and the stars above. (http://www.snorkel.com)

I don’t claim to be a gardener, but did some modest gardening when I lived in the house full-time. I’ve grown potatoes, squash, pumpkins, lots of garlic and tons of tomatoes outside in the raised beds. In the greenhouse, I can pretty much grow kale and spinach year-round, with tomatoes and peppers 9-10 months out of the year. I filled the greenhouse with highly fertile bottom land scraped up the little park-like area near the stream, and have always kept it fertilized and composted. I haven’t been able to tend to it much this year (I’m deployed overseas), but the greenhouse can be reconditioned quickly and made productive in short order. So—between the six raised beds and the greenhouse, one can get their gardening fix sated. As for fruit trees, there are 4-5 apple trees along the southern line of the property that are very productive; I’ve never maintained these trees, and don’t harvest the fruit (my edible-type hobbies consisting primarily of growing peppers, garlic and making home-brew). But the apple trees do produce. I also have several walnut trees in the park-like area below the house fronting the stream. The trees surrounding the house consist primarily of maple and oak. For those prospects interested in selectively harvesting some trees for carpentry or other building projects, the 6.25 acres has a wealth of mature oak, ash, walnut and maple.

This is not just a cabin in the woods designed for 3-season utility. This is a year-round home for those who choose to live year-round in it. It’s warm in the winter, and it does get warm in the summer too—but with fans in the summer, you’re good to go. Some people would prefer having an air conditioner, but I never needed one during the four years I lived full-time in the house. I do have a portable air conditioner that comes with the property, and as long as you run the generator, you can run the air conditioner. As for the winter time, the house is completely snug and warm, given 18-inch-thick bales, the passive solar hit from the greenhouse and the Vermont Castings heat-stove. Given the thermal mass of the plastered walls, a good sunny day in the January will store enough 75-degree-plus residual heat in the walls to where the Vermont Castings will cycle on less than 4-6 times a night. Nothing like realizing in the dead quiet of an early evening that there are four inches of snow on the greenhouse glass already, and the world has turned completely white outside. Toasty warm inside!

After reading above, is this something you want to do? Trust me on this—there are a lot of people who like to talk about 'someday' building a strawbale, environmental home...they'll go to the workshops, wear the tie-died shirts, eat tofu and listen to REM, but when it actually comes time to actually build the house, plaster the bales, lift the logs, implement a graywater system, sweep the snow off the solar panels, clear the driveway, maintain the water ram, water the batteries (I think by now you get the idea), then fascination sours. Too many people just talk a big project like this one away, and the actual work gets overwhelming. It's easy to get overwhelmed, and that's when people rationalize a way to quit. And it never comes to fruition.

I can help you identify the kind of details you need to know as you go about building your own dream environmental home. It's not easy—but knowledge is power, and knowledge will save you a boat load of money in the long run.