When Betsy Cashen and Chris Stearne decided to build their dream house on land they owned in Claverack, they had a problem: Their five-acre property lacked access to power lines. By freak coincidence, it was situated in the gap between the terminuses of the lines owned by two power companies, Niagara Mohawk and New York Electric and Gas. Getting hooked up to either company's lines, each located about a quarter of a mile away, would cost approximately $20,000, so the couple chose a radical alternative—designing and building a solar house that produces its own electric power.
The site, a gently sloping field oriented to the south and backed by protective woods on the north and west, was ideal. The property is also situated amid some of the prettiest countryside in Columbia County. It's part of the 200-acre farm where Cashen grew up and which is permanently protected by a conservation easement (Cashen's brother owns an organic farm nearby).
Stearne had become smitten with the round kit houses produced by Deltec Homes and had even visited its factory on trips to Asheville, North Carolina. Although Deltec's homes are not designed to be passive solar, Stearne embarked on his own set of calculations, spending long hours on the Internet searching for everything from weather data from Albany to the R-values of different types of insulation. The former Navy pilot—he currently is the baker at Hawthorne Valley Farms, in Harlemville—then applied the data to the dimensions of a building consisting of 17 eight-foot-long sides.
Construction started in July 2003. The kit arrived on two huge tractor trailers and the crew erected the shell in a record-breaking four and a half days. In March 2004 the couple moved into the house with their daughter, Abigail, now five.
The attractive cedar-sided round structure has a curving expanse of windows and a peaked roof. A small square addition houses the foyer and a spacious bedroom wing. The only clue to the house's isolation from the grid is the huge flat screen of 12 solar panels perched off to one side, which swivels at the rate of one degree every two minutes. Inside, the house has the open, warm feel of a converted barn. It has a spacious layout, crowned by a gorgeous, pickled-pine circular ceiling that measures 40 feet at its apex; multiple levels—you walk from the foyer up a step into the main living area and then up another step into the bedroom wing; and faceted walls, which create a dynamic play of space, suggesting the dramatic, pared-down geometric spaces of the International Style. Salvaged items, such as oak pocket doors, lights from a former factory, and antique windows, which are inserted into the interior walls, add a whimsical charm. Even the floor of concrete—a material that efficiently absorbs and retains the heat of the sun—is appealing, with its earth-red hue and textured pattern, an effect created by spraying the concrete with a diluted solution of hydrochloric acid and iron for color.
The solar panels provide two kilowatts of electricity, which is conveyed through an underground cable to the charge controller and the two 24-volt battery banks in the small basement under the foyer. Black boxes above the battery banks house the inverters, which convert the batteries' DC power to AC.The house is airtight: Polyurethane insulation sprayed under the shingle roof acts as its own vapor barrier, so no venting was required in the soffits or roof. The foundation is also insulated: Recycled, cement-faced, two-inch polyurethane foam was used both on the exterior of the frost wall (foam board was used on the interior of the wall) and to cover the house's slab foundation.
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