We came across some rough-sawn elm cut to 5/4″ that we thought would work well to make the loft floor in the barn, but it turned out to be only about half the needed number of board feet. Then a good friend kindly offered us some old white oak timbers […]
A crew from Whole Trees Architecture and Construction spent Tuesday and Wednesday on our land and completed peeling all the trees that need peeling this summer to serve as the unmilled timbers we will be using to build our house next spring. Selected not only because they are the right […]
Guest Post by Doug Hansmann With daytime high temperatures staying in the 70s this week, we’re getting a much-appreciated reprieve from what’s been a roasting summer here in Wisconsin. And as Denise and I finalize the orientation of the passive-solar house we intend to build next year, minimizing all possible […]
Today was an exciting day. Doug and I cleared overgrown trails and created new ones for the past few days so that today we could walk our woods with Roald Gundersen of Whole Trees Architecture and Construction and with his assistant Della Hansmann, who is designing our house. We were […]
GUEST POST BY DELLA HANSMANN Read more of her thoughts on green building and design at Dwelling Places. Denise and Doug have been planning to build a house for a long time. They were thinking about this natural dream home from the time they bought land in rural Wisconsin in […]
We are not going to make it to the Midwest Renewable Energy Fair this year because it conflicts with a rare reunion of my far-flung family. I will miss it, and I will especially miss attending the workshops on compressed earth blocks by Midwest Earth Builders. Looking through the Energy […]
We have been drawing up plans for our house for years, but putting a sod roof on our house is a new idea to me. My architects (Whole Tree Architecture) are comfortable with sod roofs. They have made several houses with a sod roof. Their studio has one. I have […]
We are edging closer and closer to a final plan for our sustainable, little house to be built next summer. We have worked out a plan that is cozy and ship shape. We have visited and seen photos of a number of Whole Tree Architecture Houses. I’m starting to develop […]
When you are building a non-traditional house, you spend a lot of time wondering about things that people building in the usual 2×4, drywall, aluminum siding and asphalt shingle world can take for granted. But Doug and I want to be green pioneers and explore new ideas about sustainable structures. […]
Several of my posts lately have been short because of family health issues. One of those issues concluded last Saturday when my father-in-law succumbed to a long, wasting disease. This man was part of my life for 33 years. He was a hard man for me to like – politically […]
Digging in the Driftless 