Angelika and Sandy
Angelika and I are both recycled from previous relationships, and found each other later in life. We discovered we had the same cordwood interests and enthusiastic energy to embark on our building journey. The Laurentian Mountains north of Montreal were the perfect location for both of us since we independently had frequented the area in previous years. So we set sail on our cordwood journey in 1996 searching and finding our land.
We sold our house, moved into a small inexpensive apartment where we spent several years preparing, as our budget allowed us, gathering materials for our home, allowing our logs to dry, and installing the well & septic system. Our research and needs set our design to a 3 bedroom, 1 story, 40 foot round cordwood home.
We started with a Frost Protected Shallow Foundation design using an insulated concrete form system, slab on grade and installed hydronic radiant floor heating tubing.
The walls are single wall 18” mostly round cedar logs. We went with a super insulated wall injecting closed cell, expanding foam, into the cavity, as we built it in sections of 2-foot elevations.
The roof is engineered roof trusses and finished with asphalt shingles, with copper detail highlights, & an insulated attic space with 18” of blown in cellulose.
There are 2 heating systems, radiant floor heating with an electric boiler, and a 35,000 btu wood pellet burning stove.
Our experience has been that the journey of self-built cordwood homes is and long and labor intensive process, requiring endless hours of dedication and focus. Once having committed to this process there is no turning back. There are endless preparations that are needed prior to the actual building of the home that can dull the enthusiasm through out the years. But once you overcome these hurdles and the skeptic people, by keeping focused on your goals, the true cordwood builder will triumph in the end. In our picture above there is more cordwood waiting to be mudded! Below is an excerpt from the last entry of our memoirs.
Friday, 19 November 2004, We made it. We beat the snow!
This is the first entry I have made sitting at my desk in our new cordwood home and may be the last for the Memoirs. We moved in last weekend and I’ve been scrambling to finish several things to make it livable. There now is a usable kitchen space & the final connection for the bathtub goes in today.
The long years of planning and hard work all come together now. There are many moments of triumph and disappointments that you endure along the way. We cherish all the celebrations we had as we reached each goal, as well as the open-minded people we met and befriended throughout the building process in person or the internet. So many people to thank. Thank you to you readers of our Memoirs, who have taken the time to share in our experiences, and should you venture down the road of building your own cordwood home I wish you the same incredible experiences we’ve had.
The feeling of finally living in our cordwood home is indescribable.
This link is for those interested in reading about our cordwood building experience. For those of you who are interested in reading more about our cordwood building adventure, please click here.
Sandy & Angelika