Sustainability and Beauty

in a Round Green Home

The two straw-clay yurts in Granville, Vermont, were built between November 2005 and June 2008. They were guided in their construction by three simple Earth-friendly unifying principles: 

• Integrate local native building materials into a seamless round design.
• Build by hand without the use of fossil fuels and heavy equipment, whenever possible.
• Make the home natural, beautiful, sustainable and healthy.



The home was inspired by green builder Ianto Evans, whose Oregon Cob Cottages are lovingly described in the book The Hand Sculpted House .

Cob is a form of earthen construction using a mix of earth, straw and water. It is very Earth-Friendly says Evans. This is, “a building method so old and so simple that it has been all but forgotten in the rush to synthetics. A cob cottage might be the ultimate expression of ecological design, a structure so attuned to its surroundings that its creators refer to it as ‘an ecstatic house.’”



Our green project idea in Granville was to grow our home rather than build it, to let it evolve like a natural organic garden, to “use the oldest, most available materials imaginable—earth, clay, sand, straw and water—and blend them to redefine the future of building.”

We chose the round Mongolian yurt design based on sound ancient building practices: A round home maximizes usable square footage, while minimizing the amount of construction materials needed along with the home’s ecological footprint. Round homes can be found in ancient tribal construction from Asia to Africa to Europe.

A round home also minimizes the amount of exterior walls, which significantly improves energy efficiency and allows for maximum passive solar warming.

Finally, a round design makes for a beautiful structure, a space that imitates and blends in with the natural setting, rather than fighting it. And the earth/straw construction encircles one in a healthy home, without the toxins found in modern building materials.



We carefully chose the land on which the home was to be built. The 25 acre wooded lot we found in Granville, Vermont was perfect. Its trees hadn’t been harvested in many years, and it was cloaked in oak, sugar maple, spruce, white ash and other trees that we could use in construction. This was also a forest that would provide firewood for many years to come, without diminishing the natural diversity or ecological integrity of the land.

We decided to build two permanent yurts. The first—the studio cottage—was to be just 200 square feet on the inside. It was intended to help us learn, explore and test our building techniques. This yurt when finished was to serve as a writer’s retreat and yoga studio, a place of solitude separate from the main house.

The second yurt was to be 1,000 square feet, including a great room, kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom, all on one floor, with a large sleeping loft occupying half the second floor.



Over a two-and-a-half year period, the home grew out of the earth. A hand-mixed and hand-poured cement foundation incorporated local fieldstone as a crowning decorative detail. Traditional wood framing, along with a wattle weave (using supple saplings from the land), served as a form for the foot-thick straw-clay walls of the studio cottage. The main house utilized traditional wood framing and lathe cut with a portable sawmill onsite.

The straw-clay for the walls (a mixture looking when wet like Chinese lo mein) was all mixed by hand, with many friends and local volunteers joining in the fun of sculpting our green home. The straw-clay walls were sealed with interior and exterior plaster, a natural stucco mix that has helped preserve similar homes in England and Germany, making them last for more than 500 years.

The ceiling became a focus for both yurts. The spruce rafters (harvested from the land) are like spokes in an immense wheel that meet at an oak ring skylight that lets in the light of sun, moon and stars. The roof is super insulated and utilizes 40 year shingles.



This rustic earth-friendly-home, built on well-tried principles thousands of years old, includes modern innovations and conveniences: A seven panel solar array provides plenty of electricity, enough to power lights, a well pump, a state of the art SunFrost refrigerator and high-speed satellite internet dish. A Woodstock soapstone stove, plus radiant floor heat keep the home cozy all winter long, while the foot-thick walls and forest location keep it cool in summer. The option is available to construct a connector between the two buildings, which, if incorporating a large picture window, would make an excellent greenhouse for spring seedlings. Finally, within a few yards of the house, a large organic garden with raised beds provides vegetables and a changing display of flowers all summer.


 
We hope that you enjoyed our review of the building of these earth-friendly buildings. To see more construction photos, visit Wallace Realty's Green Built Vermont web page.