100 mile builder
| March 2010
Building what might be the world's tallest straw bale house, Dominique Tonetti and Frank Dutton had a vision for sustainable building that they wouldn't compromise. The result of their perseverance is a 38-foot tall straw bale rental cottage on Willoughby Lake in Quebec across the Ontario border from Ottawa. It is the first of 10 similar structures planned for 350 acres of land on that and neighbouring Bully Lake. “There's the 100-mile diet,” Tonetti said. “Well, this is the 100-mile house.”
In addition to the straw bale the house's timber frame is built from trees cut on their property and heated with a masonry stove that consumes one-fifth what a wood stove does without creating creosote.
The house's height, too, has a practical application. While Dutton said they had just applied to the Guinness Book of World Records – the tallest reference to another straw bale house they found was 25 feet – the height was necessary to compete against the trees for the southern sun's attention, as the house is solar-powered and completely off the grid.
Tonetti, an architect who worked on sustainability projects with Public Works and Government Services Canada, including the Museum of Nature's renovation, compared the evolution of steel structures from three storeys to 101 in the world's metropolises to her straw bale ambitions. “So the same thing's happening here in Kaz (the town where the house was built),” she said, laughing.
The solar energy is stored in batteries in a small, discreet closet. Dutton said people stay the whole week, using the microwave, dishwasher and other amenities without even realizing they're off the grid. This complicated their mortgage, however. The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) only recently started approving straw bale structures and still won't approve houses that are off-grid, so Tonetti and Dutton had to get creative in their financing. “They have all the magical words but they don't have the policy to back it up,” Tonetti said of the CMHC's use of the language of sustainability.
When they finally got a grant, in September 2008, they were only a month away from the first snowfall in one the cruellest winters in recent memory. Dutton remembers putting the roof on just after Christmas in -39 degree weather, leaving the back hoe running for three days straight because it wouldn't restart otherwise. Drills died after making three holes. Fingers froze grasping chainsaws. To help fund the construction they conducted a practical on-site workshop on straw bale building with about 10 people from as far away as Montreal who paid for the course. “They were very brave because it was -22 when we did it,” Dutton said.
It's an approach they plan to employ on their next cottages, and Kaz Mayor Ota Hora has talked about the municipality collaborating to provide training for recently unemployed lumber workers. Tonetti and Dutton plan to build 10 cottages and a spa over the next 10 years, each made of straw but possessing its own distinct features, such as thatched roofs or adobe covering replacing the lime and cement parging on the first one.
They opened last summer while the house wasn't quite finished, continued construction through the fall and the rented it again over Christmas. They already have 60 days of guaranteed rentals for the upcoming season, which will make funding for future constructions easier.
In the high season, a full-week rental costs $1,900 and weekends go for $1,050. Tonetti and Dutton said the place is ideal for family reunions and other large gatherings as it comfortably holds 16 people and is built with wheelchair access. “It's designed to resist a few parties,” Dutton said.
For more information visit http://www.solisterra.com/anglais/Welcome.html