jamius.com

My wife and I with the extensive help of family built a passive solar straw bale home in PEI Canada. We did all the work ourselves except the plumbing wiring and septic/well.

It took us three years on evenings and weekends, the first winter we burned one and a half cords of wood as the only bill for heat, the second yeah we used an air source heat pump which cost about $250 to run for the winter and half a cord of wet wood.

That is really cool! I hope you post some pictures.

What made you decide to embark on this adventure? Where were you living before? What is your property like? Are you off the grid?

greenspree.ca is my website if you want to see photos and posts on the construction process.

We are not off grid as the grid runs right by our house anyways, why not use the grid if it's already there? If we want to go net zero we can do it thro

Ugh net metering and energy efficiency measures, no need to waste the resources of the grid that's already built and no need to buy batteries, the grid is our battery.

We were renters before building this house on our 2.5 acres of old farm field. We are slowly transforming the land back to productive gardens and woods, using only native trees and shrubs whenever possible.

greenspree wrote:greenspree.ca is my website if you want to see photos and posts on the construction process.

Great website. I'm enjoying reading your posts.

greenspree wrote:We are not off grid as the grid runs right by our house anyways...no need to waste the resources of the grid that's already built and no need to buy batteries, the grid is our battery.

I know what you mean. We are doing the same thing with our PV array. We can generate about 1200 watts under optimal conditions, and my family tend to use between 600 and 1000 watts for everything in the house. At first the using the grid as a big battery didn't appeal to me...but I really get it now.

greenspree wrote:We were renters before building this house on our 2.5 acres of old farm field. We are slowly transforming the land back to productive gardens and woods, using only native trees and shrubs whenever possible.

Very cool. I saw you were/are taking some forestry/land use kind of classes? That's very cool. I look forward to seeing what you do with your land.

Making some raised garden beds this weekend!

Raised beds done, Hugelkultur style getting rid of a few piles of scrap wood from the construction process.

On track for this weekend: cutting firewood and building chicken coop.

I love the idea of a straw bale home. It is so simple, but seems to work very well.

http://youtu.be/WDkR-6pEJvs

Link to a video tour I uploaded of the house!

BTW straw bales homes are definitely NOT simple. Stick framing is simple.