Glen and Rhonda Fletcher

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With an average January temperature of 17°F and 8,400 heating degree-days, Montmorency County isn't much warmer than Caribou, Maine, or International Falls, Minnesota. Yet Glen and Rhonda heat their cordwood-walled house with one woodstove.

The floor and ceiling are heavily insulated—the 2 X 12 joists and rafters are filled with fiberglass—and there are doublepane windows and insulated metal doors throughout. But the energy efficiency of cordwood walls is arguable. With the Rvalue of wood about 1.5 per inch multiplied by 12 inches, you come up with a total R of only 18. From this you also have to subtract the losses from the moreconductive mortar. The roughly R-15 total isn't high for the climate.

Still, many people who live comfortably in cordwood (and log) houses claim that theoretical R-values don't tell the whole story. They find that their homes just seem to work better than the technologists predict.

Some suggest that this may be due to the fact that the mass of the walls stores heat. Others feel that heat absorbed by the walls radiates back onto the occupants, keeping them comfortable at a low air temperature. But until someone monitors the performance of one of these houses, people like the Fletchers will probably just have to continue being happy feeling comfortable, without being able to explain just why they do.

The Details

Getting a house livable and finishing it are two different things, particularly for owner-builders. Between November 1983 and spring 1985, Rhonda and Glen trimmed the interior of their home with cedar cabinets and woodwork, built a 20' X 40' barn, and began putting that nine tons of landscaping rock to work. Little details, like the last of the exterior painting, also had to wait until the second spring. Today, though, the Fletchers have finished the landscaping, and, as Rhonda put it, "We are slowly but surely getting there."

Building your own house may not be the easiest way to find a place to live, but it can be the most rewarding. By substituting ingenuity, planning, and labor for several truckloads of conventional materials, the Fletchers put up a 1,536-square-foot home for $13,445: less than $9 per square foot. If what they've created could be bought, it would probably cost at least five times as much.

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