When you build a house, you find yourself in the market for a lot of light bulbs. Prepare to be blinded by the light, because the range of bulbs on the market is both dazzling and disappointing. According to the U.S. Lighting Energy Policy website, incandescent bulbs still account for […]
On Friday, the shortest day of the year, our solar hot water panels began to pass sun-soaked heat to the floors of Underhill House for the first time. The system awoke to a sunny, cold morning and began to circulate a steadily-warming glycol solution between the panels and our basement […]
A few weeks ago, our dear friend, Charles Heide flew over our house and photographed it from the air. He kindly sent us a CD with his photos, and I have spent far too much time gazing at them since. A bird’s-eye view of the world. What a wonderful sight. […]
Underhill House is a blend of high-tech materials and natural building materials – like straw bale and lime clay plaster. But before they are, we need to map the mysteries that will be buried by plaster. Wiring, plumbing and wooden framing all need to be noted. Doug and I spent […]
Last summer, one of the crew building Underhill House asked if we would like to build a cob oven. Brad pointed out that we had all the materials on hand. stone left over from the slipform stone wall (see my blog post Creating a Cob Oven ) plenty of clay […]
This week we are finally getting the solar panels installed that will heat our floors and provide our domestic hot water! The process began months ago with Andy DeRocher our project manager at Full Spectrum Solar, who designed the system. Full Spectrum always uses Heliodyne panels, which have been made […]
When planning to build Underhill House, we chose concrete floors because we want the most energy-efficient heating and cooling. Concrete is a great place to store heat. Our house is designed so that in the winter, the sun will pour in on our floors, and warm them all day long. […]
Trying to build as greenly as possible means constant decisions. When we got ready to paint Underhill House, we had two basic questions. 1. What company to go with? We started out getting paint from Sherwin Williams because we were familiar with them and liked them. We got the paint […]
It’s time to paint the interior of Underhill House! Doug and I agreed to do the painting ourselves when we worked out the contract to build with Whole Tree Architecture and Structures . It seemed like one of the ways we could get our hands into the project and save some […]
Digging in the Driftless 