Our Owner Built Home

We live in an owner built home of our own creation. And by owner built I mean that we built it with our own hands and minds. Every panel, from the walls, floors and roof to the partition walls, doors and even the individual stair treads, are built as stressed skin panels. No drywall, nails, or even dimensional lumber are part of it. Not that I’ve anything against those things, well, except for drywall, I hate that stuff. It has 12-inches of insulation, almost four times the standard, not only in the exterior walls and roof, but also in the interior wall and upper floors. This way we can heat just the occupied rooms. I have built a hydronic heating system which allows us to send heat as hot water discreetly to any room. Currently the heat source for this is propane, In the future we will add the ability to heat the water, actually non toxic antifreeze, by burning firewood as well. Our home is not a challenge to keep warm in the winter, extremely cold winters here, and requires no energy for cooling in the summer. A visitor during a heat wave last summer asked if we have air conditioning upon arrival because it stays so comfortable inside. It is solar powered, for electricity, and propane and/or firewood for heat. On long summer days we have enough surplus electricity from the solar that I run an electric water heater avoiding the need for propane for domestic hot water. Irrigation is another good way to use some electricity that would otherwise have nowhere to go. I have to say that I am utterly impressed by how much electricity can be had by solar panels, when the sun is shining we are awash in electricity and looking for things to aim it at, like pumping or heating water. An electric car would actually be feasible as we could charge up for our trips to town which are lengthy, 160mi round trip, but infrequent.

Truss welding jig,

I prefabricated these open web trusses in the garage of our rented home in the city and transported batches of them to our future home in the wilderness.

When I look back at these photos, I wonder how I ever did all of this.

One very nice thing about our home is that we can remove interior wall boards in a non destructive manner. I simply remove 20 or so machine thread screws with a cordless drill and voila, we have access to the inside of the wall for plumbing or what not. Afterward the same board is replaced in the same way with the same screws, much like a part on a car. In the photo above I have removed a board in order to add a bunch of hydronic lines.

Heat exchanger tank under construction, version 2.0 For both the hydronic and domestic hot water. Version 3 will be vacuum insulated, I think.

Solar panels, 1 row of 12 panels at the leading edge of the roof, we have another 8 on a another earlier built structure. Note the end of the copper pipe loop that is the solar panel snow melter, We can pump hot glycol through this from the hydronic system.

Upper floor under construction. Here we are installing the first of two layers of 5/8″ flake board, the second layer will be glued to the first with staggered seams. Note that even this internal floor is getting 12 inches of insulation.

We call this room the panel room, in this photo we are making the planks for the window surrounds. These planks also make for great scaffold boards, and are themselves stressed skin panels.

The window surrounds are glued to both the inner and outer skins, very strong.

Interior partition wall panel construction, all of these were prefabbed and then moved into place. They make up the walls for the guest room and bathrooms etc. and can be relocated.

For those of you wondering about the strength of a panel made from foam, glue and 1/4″ plywood, here is a photo of one of the benches that we make and sell, pre upholstery and with more than a thousand pounds of gravel placed on it.

Stair tread production, 1/4″ plywood skins, 1–1/2″ foam and laminated plywood at panel edges, all glued together as a sandwich. This process creates extraordinarily little waste as we can make use of very small pieces of wood and foam.

Here are some other stairs made with plywood ribs instead of foam for the core.