Recently in off-grid Category

Family finds sun, wind and straw are a recipe for success

Originally published in the Globe and Mail on April 22, 2006

In a house with an entire wall of windows reaching up 17 feet, it's the little 12" by 14" one in the foyer that's most intriguing.

Appropriately called the "truth window," it offers a tantalising peek at the guts of Glen Hunter and Joanne Sokolowski's house, which they built themselves in 2002: A golden tangle of straw, held tight with red binder and hemmed in by black plastic chicken-wire.

The window is there for many reasons. It's a great conversation-piece for first time visitors who know nothing about straw-bale houses; it reminds the couple of days spent with family and friends stacking and stitching the 400 bales that form three walls of their open-concept 2500 square foot post-and-beam home southeast of Peterborough and, lastly; it's an important reminder that things aren't always what they seem.

For instance, you'd never know the Hunter-Sokolowski family live in a house that's completely self-sufficient, one of about 1000 in the province that don't rely on the power-grid for electricity.

"We strongly feel you shouldn't live in a place like this and have to do without," Mr. Hunter explains, standing beside an outlet sprouting cell-phone chargers in a kitchen filled with the usual appliances as if to illustrate his point. "We're not trying to go back to nature; this is a modern home, we have all the modern conveniences, the only major appliance we don't have is a clothes-dryer."

Like a lot of other things around here, clothes get dry via solar-power--swinging on the line outside in summer and strung across "the gallery" right in front of all those big southern-facing windows in winter.

Mr. Hunter loves his windows. Sure, they cost $55,000, but they offer breathtaking views of his 100 acres and, more importantly, let in great gobs of precious sunlight, which form the "passive" part of his heating system. Sometimes, his radiant concrete-slab floor has soaked up enough of the sun's rays during the daytime it doesn't even switch on at night.

While Mr. Hunter's convictions for moving off-grid are as big as his window-wall, humility keeps his preaching down to "truth window" size. "I try to stay away from moral arguments about why we did any of this stuff," he says. "We don't want to be the kind of people that say 'Thou shalt build in this way.'"

August 2003's infamous blackout wasn't what drove Mr. Hunter from Toronto's Riverdale to a life spent monitoring the energy input of solar panels and a wind-turbine; when the lights went out he and his wife had already been ensconced in the Kawarthas for three months. A self-proclaimed technophile, he'd always been interested in off-grid living and, armed with a lifetime of building experience with his father, home construction didn't faze him either. So, they hired an architect to get the ball rolling.

When they didn't get what they wanted, they fired the architect.

Then, the couple ran into another architect while dog-walking, neighbour Paul Dowsett, and asked for his recommendation. Although he'd never done an off-grid home before, Mr. Dowsett (of Scott Morris Architects) came back a few days later with a plan so stunning they hired him on the spot. "We are now the first of, I think three, off-grid environmentally-sensitive homes he's done," beams Mr. Hunter.

And what a home he's created for Hunter, Sokolowski, 18-month old Gil and the baby that's expected this autumn. Sitting in the bright and spacious living area under the soaring segmented roof held aloft by Paralam beams, Mr. Hunter, ironically sporting a Pickering Nuclear Generating Station work-shirt, talks choreography. For his home, that is. His office area will become a bedroom for Gil when the new baby takes over the nursery off the master bedroom--one, two--when the new baby needs a separate room, they'll borrow a little more square footage from the living area and subdivide Gil's room--three, four--the nursery, with plumbing already roughed-in, will then become a parental ensuite--five, six, seven, eight--in 20 years, when the kids have grown up, the walls will come down, again opening up the space that's "designed to hold a pool table," he chuckles. "We built a 100-year house, not a 20-year tract home."

Time Mr. Hunter will spend, no doubt, perfecting the amazing low-wattage LED light fixtures he's developed for the house (available at Eurolite), the inspiration for which came, like most great inventions, from a simple need: Driving home during pitch-black country nights, the couple needed to "find the house" by leaving a few lights on without sucking too much power from their energy storage-tank. They also wanted ambient lighting during late-night television sessions so they could get to the bathroom "without tripping over a dog or hitting a shin on something" so shaft and borealis were born.

Mr. Hunter is full of bright ideas. Now if the rest of us would just lighten up a little and slap a few solar panels on the roof, we'd really be opening a window onto a new world.

To read an online diary of the home's construction, visit www.glenhunter.ca

by Dave LeBlanc

"The Architourist."