As part of being recognized by NESEA’s Zero Net Energy Building Award, we will be hosting a Pro-Tour with NESEA at our home on May First. In addition to standard tour faire, there will be in depth discussions about the building science, design, and systems that make our home work. There will be a presentation and reception at the Guiding Star Grange down the street from our home. Space is limited so sign up soon. Register at:

http://nesea.org/be-event/2015-zero-net-energy-building-award-winner-pro-tour

Spartan (right) receives the NZEB Award at the Building Energy Conference in Boston. With Dan Burgess, acting commissioner of the MA DOER, and Jennifer Marrapese, executive director of NESEA

Friends of ours in Brattleboro Vermont are building a strawbale timberframe home for themselves. Early on in our design process for our own home we considered such a building, but decided it wasn’t right for us at that time. Chad Mathrani has got us thinking about it again and shows us how to integrate modern building science with natural building traditional techniques. The result: a meticulously designed and crafted home that will be standing for hundreds of years. If you are looking to build or learn about building we recommend checking out Chad’s business: Vermont Natural Homes. Also, 475 High Performance Building Supply put together a great interview with Chad.

Vermont Natural Homes’ Current Project: A strawbale timberframe home. Photo courtesy of Vermont Natural Homes.

We recently had our friend Beth Reynolds from Base Camp Photo over to shoot pictures of the interior. Check out her pictures on our Photographs page.

In preparation for our presentation at Building Energy 15 I redrew the floor plans and wall detail diagrams so they are more user-friendly. Full CAD plans also available on our Architectural Plans Page. Click on images for larger versions.

South wall detail drawing

Incredible News: We are the recipient of the 2015 Zero Net Energy Building award from NESEA! There is an article about us in today’s Greenfield Recorder and Hampshire Gazette: http://www.gazettenet.com. A huge thank you to everyone who helped with this project especially Adam Heintz, Scott Baum, Peter Talmage, Hannah Smeltz, my parents, Thom Burden, John Scanlon, and Whip Withington. I will be in Boston for most of this week at the NESEA- Northeast Sustainable Energy Association Building Energy Conference where I will be honored to present on our house.