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Mica Peak AGS

Patience II
 12620 S. Harvard Road
 Rockford, WA 99030

Owner: R. Joris & Marilynne L Mueller
Phone: 509-291-3119
Design Consultant: Don Stephens - 509-838-8222
Builder’s Name: Owner - Builder

At this site you'll see Annualized Geo-Solar – Strawbale Walls – Rammed Earth – Use of site soil, tires and other salvaged materials.

SYSTEMS

• Passive solar design by the Annualize Geo-Solar (AGS) technique, using SUMMER solar (collected by ground-mounted, salvaged-materials flat-plate thermosyphon) as it's heat source, on-site soil as it's passive heat storage medium and to provide a designed-in 6-month-delayed return through the floor slab to provide WINTER warmth, and with perimeter sub-grade insulation/water-diversion extensions (to prevent bi-pass stored-heat losses to the surounding land surfaces), of strawbale (protected from moisture by poly-sheets), and with membrane back-fill protection by salvaged/used carpeting, all also providing long-term sequestration of carbon.
• Alternative/innovative building envelope/EXPOSURE WALLS - Strawbale w/ soil-cement stucco finish, s-c stuccoed Rastra, at house main level, insulated frame walls at second story "pilot-house" and solar chmney with synthetic stucco, stuccoed concrete block at garage. SUBGRADE WALLS - wood-framed between house and "vertical-crawlspace" behind, poured soil-cement at vert.crawl-to-earth connection, earth-rammed-tires at shop, tire-bales at garage and annualized passive cold-room (straw-blocks between cold-room and garage).
• Energy efficient windows/daylighting strategies, including sky-windows above garden-wells (behind north-side bathrooms) and open stairway from "pilot-house" (with closable "glass ceiling" at stair-top, of re-used full-glass doors, to prevent convective upward winter heat-losses) to provide light from the north, "re-lighting" with mirrors and salvaged glass block, to maximize light-sharing.
• Roofing system -6-8” Soil & Plants on water-proofed and backfill-protected roof-deck, over composite-wood-I-joists with 14" high strawbales as insulation between (providing, with the earth-cover, a functional R-60+ insulation value); insulation at shop of rice-hulls.
• Rainwater catchment

Materials

• Engineered wood materials - TST, G___ Lams, Paralams, Composite-wood-I-joists
• Alternative framing materials - Rammed Dirt Walls, salvaged/reused cabinetry used as a partition,
• Sustainable lumber (harvesting, reuse, local species, etc.) Stand Dead, Fire Damaged, Tamarack Post & Beam
• Low-toxic materials - Paint from Environmental Home Center
• Recycled materials (contents, reclaimed, etc.) - Cabinets, Broken Concrete “Urbanite”
• Minimization of materials Some areas' floors of simply "salvaged/used carpet over poly-sheet over earth"

Other

• Temp Gauges in Soil
• Moisture Checking in Strawbale Walls with Wood Moisture Meter
• Minimized impact on site
• Size of project (s.f.):1650 (main living area), plus "vertical-crawl-space", shop, garage, cold-room and greenhouse. Year completed: 2003 – 8 Years Building – Are they ever done?

Descriptive Paragraph by the Owner-builders

We would like to welcome master gardeners and their families to TerraHaven (our property) to see our home (Patience II) that we have been building for the last seven years. After retiring we wanted to build a more ecologically sustainable home. We had already remodeled the house we were living in by adding insulation, upgrading windows and adding a solarium --- Plus took out the lawns so we could have a haven for the birds in from and a large organic garden in back. But my husband always wanted to build an earth sheltered home. So that is now what we have!—with a roof garden, exterior walls build of straw bales that we hand stuccoed, post beam construction of trees killed by fire and trees downed by Ice Storm ’96, rammed-earth wall and blocks made from our soil, patios and veranda made with broken concrete, energy efficient windows and window coverings, energy efficient lighting, many recycled items, and a passive annual heat storage system. This last item takes the heat from the summer sun and stores it in the soil beneath the house for use through the winter. There are temperature gauges in the soil to inform us of what is happening.

The soil on the roof is only 6-8 inches of straw/chopped leaves/soil/aged sawdust mix. My challenge was to find plants that could survive full sun in our hot Inland Empire summers with so little soil mix and questioned if even soil life could survive. I’ve found that the wind is constantly removing the soil mix and the problem is to get enough plant cover to prevent this. Besides being deer resistant, plants were chosen that were fire resistant, drought tolerant, and had fibrous root systems.

The other gardens are in an early stage of development, along with the soil. The site where our house is was pine forest about 25 years ago and was cleared to farm. The farmer told us he couldn’t even get hay to grow on some of it. The land was steep in many places, highly erodable, and the soil very poor—so it had been put into a Conservation Reserve Program and planted with grass and clover to try and build up the soil. The grass has had a hard time surviving in some areas and noxious weeds have found a home there. We have battled these for 12 years now and they are a constant source of frustration. I have spent entire summers just tackling the weed problem –hand pulling, spot spraying, hiring custom spraying, hiring some hard-working neighbor children to help remove weeds before they went to seed, getting some goats to help weed, and applying biological controls. But think I am losing ground. In an effort to build up the soil in the immediate surrounding yard area cover crops of winter rye and hairy vetch were planted one September followed by buckwheat the next May. Compost had been added first, but still the crops were very sparse.

So come find out what I have done to the soil and the yard, see what grows on our roof, see what we have done so far on the house (we are not finished), try to spot Steptoe Butte from our Pilot House, and most of all enjoy friends and refreshments.

Marilynne and Jerry

Descriptive Paragraph, by the Designer

This project was conceived of as not only a retirement residence by it's owner-builders, but also their way to pursue a social/environmental mission of continuingly demonstrating to the public, as wide a range of effective, "alternative/green" building techniques and materials as possible. And so, many more strategies and environmental and/or salvaged materials were incorporated, than would typically be represented in any one project. The clients had already considered and moved beyond both the basic "earth-ship" and the basic "Passive Annual Heat Storage - modular concrete system" concepts, before bringing me into the process. They wished to have more flexibility in design than the modules provided and more opportunity for owner-involvement in the design process, which I encourage, and they hoped to use far less "new" concrete (a high-embodied-energy and high-greenhouse-gas-releasing material). I'd evolved, over a number of years, ways of building inexpensively underground using renewable materials like protected wood and straw, and a different annualized solar strategy, utilizing heat from any of a range of isolated solar collectors, (rather than the direct-gain/high-mass-structure approach typical of PAHS), and tapping the predictable time-lag which heat-transfer through soil provides, to design homes to be cool in summer and warm in winter. (For a detailed discussion of AGS vs. PAHS, see http://www.solarwashington.org/solar%20wa/Tour/2005/Received%20Project%20Sheets%20-%20Softcopy/Spokane/www.greenershelter.org/index.php?pp=2 .) New techniques evolved with the clients, for this particular project, included the use of straw-bales sandwiched between composite wood I 's for the roof system, use of bales subgrade for the perimeter insulation " cape" and the use of tire-bales to surround the annualized cold-room and provide against-the-hill retainment for the garage north wall. We also shared a commitment to earth-integration, for weather-protection, temperature moderation and to express a less dominant view of our species' proper relationship to the rest of the planet. I'd been designing with passive solar and earth-sheltering since Architecture School in the 1960s and Marilynne's involvement with organic gardening and her master-gardener training made a "living roof" a natural...

Directions to Site:

Marilynne Mueller
12620 S. Harvard Road (About 18 miles SE of Lincoln Hts. Or 15 miles S of City of Spokane Valley)
509-291-3119

From the Spokane South Hill take the Old Palouse Hwy to Hwy 27. Turn right heading south to Freeman. Continue 2 miles past the Freeman Store to Elder Rd. East, turn left. Continue east 2 miles to Harvard Rd., turn left. Go north 2 miles to 4 mail boxes. Turn left. Go across the bridge and take a right. Turn left at barn and go up hill to the second house. There is parking behind and in driveway. From town take the Appleway Cutlet to Dishman-Mica Rd. SE to Hwy 27 or take I-90 to Pines Exit and go south on Pines which becomes Hwy 27. Head south to Freeman and follow directions above.