Reporter Roberta Avery, left, sits outside the EcoNest, a home built in the Riverstone Retreat forest preserve near Durham. The building’s natural materials include twig lathwork, mud, stone and straw insulation.
This house is made of mud, straw?
October 11, 2008
Special to the Star
WEST GREY, Ont.–Spending the night in a home inspired by the birds didn't sound exactly inviting, so I arrived at Canada's first EcoNest prepared to rough it. After all, I had been on hand 16 months earlier when construction began and had reason to be skeptical about what I might discover on my return trip.
During that first visit, I saw the walls of the natural home built from a slurry of clay, straw, wood chips and water, and heard Robert Laporte remark, "The average person spends 90 to 95 per cent of their time indoors; the home should be a sanctuary that nurtures your body, mind and spirit."
A pioneer of natural buildings, Laporte came to Ernie and Edith Martin's Riverstone Retreat Centre, near the town of Durham – about 150 kilometres northwest of Toronto – to demonstrate the building technique he developed watching a swallow construct its nest.
Once a log-home builder in Sudbury, Laporte is based in sunny and dry New Mexico. His assurances that the Riverstone EcoNest would have "walls that breathe" and keep the home snug and dry without the use of an "unhealthy" vapour barrier left me wondering if this would be true in wet and damp Grey County.
About 20 people from across Canada paid Laporte $495 (US) each to attend his four-day seminar and by the time they left, the straw and clay walls were in place and Ernie and Edith Martin were tasked with collecting twigs to build the wattle interior walls then hand daub them with a plaster made of natural earth from a nearby swamp mixed with straw and flour.
Using natural materials results in a healthier home environment because there is no off-gassing from the toxic chemicals used to make synthetic conventional building materials.
"EcoNests provide a much healthier environment and when completed, they look very much like a conventional home," said Laporte.
Looking at the rough exterior walls and thinking of the Martins collecting the thousands of twigs needed for the interior walls, I couldn't imagine it would ever look like a conventional home and I thought there was little hope it would nurture anyone's body.
Laporte said builders in Germany used similar techniques 800 to 1,000 years ago. I pointed out that life expectancy was about 35 years at the end of the first millennium.
"You should try one for size to see for yourself," said Laporte.
So 16 months later, when the Martins had finally collected enough twigs and the EcoNest was completed, my husband, John, and I took up the challenge and with the car loaded with warm and dry blankets – we feared everything inside would be damp – we set out to spend the night in the EcoNest.
We arrived after dark, but the movement sensors turned on the lights and the building was flooded with light. The giant timbers perfectly framed the handcrafted exterior of the clay walls. Still, I wasn't convinced. As the night air was cool, I braced myself to be enveloped by a damp chill as I stepped inside.
Instead, we discovered a warm, inviting atmosphere. An earthy, but not unpleasant, smell reminded me of our younger days camping in Algonquin Park.
Ernie Martin said the building was so well insulated and angled to take advantage of any solar power that it didn't need any other heating except during the coldest days, when the masonry fireplace warms the entire two-bedroom home. He doubted there would ever be a need for the electric baseboard heaters he'd been required to install to meet building regulations.
The EcoNest has two bathrooms and a full kitchen, and draws on well water deep beneath the ground. Sewage is pumped into a bog where the plants act as filters, before the waste is pumped into a weeping bed.
This was far from roughing it. We didn't even bother to get our blankets out of the car. Our bedroom was spacious and well-lit, with a window and a skylight above the bed. But the walls that divide each of the bedrooms from the hallway stop about one metre short of the ceiling, so there could be a problem with noise transference if several people stay overnight.
I wondered if we would be kept awake by mice that might have taken up residence inside the walls. But if they've made a home in the EcoNest, we didn't hear or see any signs of them, and sleep came easy and we awoke refreshed.
That may have been because there was no phone or cellular signal, which removed us from the demands of daily urban life.
Susan Magwood, who had stayed in the EcoNest with 12 family members on a very hot August weekend, said before she arrived she was concerned about the lack of air-conditioning.
"I thought it would be stuffy with 12 of us in that small house, but it wasn't at all; the temperature stayed perfect," said Magwood.
Her son-in-law Paul has asthma, but he found breathing in the EcoNest was not difficult.
"He used fewer Kleenexes that weekend than he had at any time in his whole life," said Magwood.
Laporte said in a phone interview from New Mexico that, while others in Canada have used similar building techniques, the Martins' structure is the first official EcoNest to be completed here.
With half a dozen more in various stages of planning and building, Laporte is encouraged by the groundswell of interest.
"Twenty years ago, there was simply no interest in my work in Canada," he said.
"But things are changing and I think I'll be able to return home permanently in the very near future."