A simple wooden house south of Montreal is home to an anonymous chef who has chosen to go back-to-the-land using the latest technologies to make it happen.
The one-and-a-half-storey, made from eastern white pine posts and beams held together with pegs rather than nails, sits near the bank of a marshy river near the Chateauguay Valley, surrounded by stands of oak, elm and maple and handmade shelters for a winter’s supply of logs.
These are examples of old-fashioned skills, joined to the 21st century in the form of a massive solar panel near the front door, and a windmill that can pump 400 watts of power into the house.
That, together with the wattage from the solar panels, comprise the 1,600 watts held in the eight batteries in the home, enough to light the interior for more than three weeks, says the homeowner. He uses this energy for lighting and to power the pump that brings water from a nearby well.
This homeowner, of Mohawk lineage, is one of a handful of Quebecers who are experimenting with living off the grid: no gas or hydroelectric lines.
He still has a way to go, he admits, using a gas barbecue to cook and powering his stove and fridge with propane. And he will fire up the generator to power the washer and dryer, or when his 11-year-old twin sons visit, so they can watch TV.
But he prefers to be self-sufficient, collecting white ash from his property and chopping logs that are then air-dried in his open-sided woodshed and finally moved to the closed winter shed near the house.
“I need to get this wood very dry to use in the Pyromass stove in the house,” he says.
The house was built nearly four years ago by Hamlet Heavy Timberwork (www.heavytimberwork.com) in Rigaud, Que., a company that specializes in timber frame houses.
“We used different native hardwoods for the knee braces, which are naturally curved and will stabilize the frame,” says Hamlet Heavy co-owner Daniel Addey-Jibb. “We used cherry, ash and oak in this construction, and the base is white pine.”
Hamlet installed the pegged timber frame with mortise and tenon joints, as well as the walls and roof and the outside siding, which is vertical boards and batten. They insulated the house with cellulose, which is recycled newsprint treated with a natural preservative that keeps rodents out and is a fire retardant, and also installed Quebec-made cherrywood windows and doors for the homeowner.
“It’s very well-insulated,” says Addey-Jibb, “an R-28 — and an R-40 roof — compared to the standard R-16 to 20.”
“I was tired of being in debt with all these monthly bills,” says the homeowner. “I wanted, for my own health, to move every day.”
So he spends a lot of time keeping himself and his house running, following the sunlight by turning his solar panels, chopping wood, feeding his stove, and putting the finishing touches on the home’s interior.
With its peaked roof and cathedral ceiling rising from the main floor to the bedroom loft spaces on either end of the house, the house is an open plan with a central fireplace and chimney, designed to keep the heat moving throughout.
“Flooring is solid wood, as is timber framing and interior walls,” says Addey-Jibb. “He wanted non-toxic materials, to be super insulated and to live as simply as possible.”
Inside, the focal point is a wood-burning masonry heater made by artisan Marcus Flynn of Pyromasse in Montreal. Crafted of recycled clay brick (the bricks from a 19th-century city building) in the Finnish style, known as a contra-flow heater with upper chamber oven, it burns hot and quickly and will absorb and radiate heat for eight to 12 hours, the homeowner says.
“The thermal charge will be slowly dissipated up to three days,” Flynn says.
From one fire per day using about 14 kilograms of wood, he says, the heater will be hot 24 hours a day, even without flame or active fire in the system. The sunken hearth surrounding the fireplace is surrounded by slate tiles, which also form the floor of the cosy hearth.
The homeowner has paid for this connection to the natural world. But, even though he has given up his hectic life of a chef for a more deliberate, home-based activity of an artisan, and despite the $50,000 for the frame of the house and $20,000 for state-of-the-art windows, he is now debt-free.
