Mother's Low-cost Home-building Contest: Winner Three

(Page 3 of 3)

September/October 1986
By Richard and Susan Mason 
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The Rewards

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The only outside labor the Masons used was $500 worth of backhoe work and that which was required by building code: $400 for a certified electrician to do outside wiring and for a registered plumber to connect the septic system and install rough plumbing. Despite going it almost completely on their own (with three small children), they managed to move in on January 28, 1983, only 21 months after breaking ground. In that time, they spent a total of only $13,000 on the project!

All their space heat comes from a woodstove that Rick designed and built, the exhaust for which feeds into a two-flue chimney faced with fieldstone from their yard. A coil plumbed into the woodburner teams up with a passive solar collector (also designed and built by Rick) to supply all their hot water. No pumps are required for these devices; they thermosiphon to the storage tank on the second floor.

There's still work to be done, and what's done hasn't always come easily. (Rick was, for example, injured in a chain saw accident in the fall of 1985, right when their third child was due, which hasn't moved the schedule forward any.) At any rate, we think you'll agree that what the Masons have accomplished so far is truly amazing.

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