A Handmade, Debt-free Home
(Page 3 of 6)
February/March 2007
By Steve Maxwell
One of the most useful features of our home is the extra-wide outside entrance to the basement (see photo). It’s part of the traditional limestone wall that forms the foundation, though the entrance could be built in a more conventional way that matches whatever style of basement you want. Regardless of how you build it, the 48-inch-wide doorway is great. It’s large enough to allow produce, firewood and large tools to be moved in and out of the basement as needed.
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Mary and I love wood, so I’ve used this material wherever possible inside without overdoing it. The floors are locally cut and milled white pine, finished to a cinnamon brown color. We’ve also used the same wood and finishing strategy for kitchen cabinets, bathroom wainscoting and built-in storage areas (see photo).
We crafted almost every feature of this house ourselves, even the exterior doors. The 3-inch-thick insulated wooden “warm doors” (see photo) I designed are one feature I strongly recommend for people who want to move beyond the ordinary and reduce heat loss. There are three layers to my design: a 1-inch-thick interior pine frame sheathed in narrow tongue and groove pine on interior and exterior faces. I cut pieces of rigid foam to fit within spaces in the central frame, caulking the joints between pieces of tongue-and-groove wood as they were installed with hidden nails and construction adhesive.
For 13 of the 16 years we’ve lived in our house, we’ve heated it using about a dozen cords of wind-fallen poplar and other softwood each year. We burn it in a masonry heater (see photo), which makes all the difference. This is an age-old technology that burns wood quickly and with very little smoke at temperatures approaching 2,000 degrees. Heat from the combustion gases transfers to the surrounding 5,000 pounds of refractory mortar and limestone that make up the heater. As the gases pass through the 13 feet of internal passageways before entering the base of the chimney, the stone picks up heat. The accumulated energy then transfers slowly to the house after the fire is completely burned out and the flue closed. Combustion is clean, safe and short-lived. During the last three years, extra building projects have prevented me from cutting our own firewood, so we’ve switched temporarily to a pellet stove. We burn about 3 tons of pellets in a heating season that lasts from mid-October to mid-May. Pellets cost about the same as firewood, but it’s easier and quicker to handle bags of pellets.
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