Earthwood Newsletter:
February 16, 2012
Free Earthwood video programs
(Scroll down for info on these.)
Open House on May 5th, 2012.
Dear Friends:
Workshops are booking faster than usual this year, particularly our May offerings, so don't delay your registrations if particular dates are important to you. Call us at 518-493-7744 if you have any questions. Note: All our guest houses are booked for Timber Framing for the Rest of Us, May 21-23. The Hermit's Hut and La Casita are still available for the May 25-28 workshops. Use the Registration page to book.
Open House on May 5th, 2012. (Cinco de Mayo!) This free open house runs from 10 am to 4 pm. The complete tour takes almost 2 hours, so please arrive by 2 pm. See eleven different living roofs, earth-sheltered housing, a dozen different cordwood masonry buildings, the masonry stove, the sauna, bicycle powered water system, off-the-grid solar electric system, and the Earthwood stone circle and trilithon. Visitors are welcome at other times, but call first at 518-493-7744 to make sure someone is here. There is no charge for short visits. Design consultations, personal instruction and comprehensive personal tours are conducted at a flat rate of $60/hour, both for individuals and groups not exceeding 12. Scroll down to How to get here under Other news below.
Click on Workshops (left) for our 2012 workshop schedule. As of today, January 23rd, we have not scheduled any regional workshops, but watch this space for any breaking news on this front. In 2011, we did them in Hawaii, Michigan, Colorado and Vermont.
The 2011 Continental Cordwood Conference Papers is now available. It is highly recommended, with lots of new techniques and best practices since the previous (2005) conference. Also, two other books have just been added to our list: Foundations and Concrete Work and Hot Tubs, Saunas and Steam Baths. You can read about them and order at our Books and Media page.
Free full length Earthwood videos. Thanks to Calvin Castine and Home Town Cable Network of Champlain, NY, we now have videos that you can watch for free. The links below will take you directly to the right page of Home Town Cable Network. When you get there, just click on the ?symbol, just as you would to watch any other video on your computer. There will be a 15 or 30-second commercial and then the video will begin. At first, it is hard to advance through the time line of the video with the slider on the time line, but after a few minutes of watching, you will find that you can advance the time line a few minutes at a time, or go back to see something again. It is easiest just to allow enough time to watch the program all the way through, although you can pause it (and resume).
About these videos: They give a good tour of Earthwood and tell about us and what we do here, but they are not intended to be instructional videos, like the ones listed on the Books and Media page. Our DVD's for sale are filmed at our workshops for the specific purpose of being instructional aids. But we think you will enjoy these freebies just the same. The first two listed below are available now and we hope to list two more here when we get back from Hawaii,, so look for them around March 22.
Earthwood Building School, Part 1, Sept. 6, 1995 63 minutes. Bob Venne and Calvin Castine came to Earthwood to do a program for Calvin's Home Town Cable. No editing takes place, but Bob manages to keep the conversation moving very well. Topics covered in Part One include: History of Murtagh Hill, reclaiming marginal land, procuring wood, how Rob and Jaki Roy got started in cordwood masonry, building La Casita and the instant slate floor, making bottle-ends, the cordwood sauna, snow-blocking panels, earth roof advantages (protection against UV and freeze-thaw damage, esthetics, insulation, etc.), about Earthwood workshops, outbuildings including Littlewood, termite discussion, wind and solar energy, earth berm and roof tour, advantages of earth-sheltering, raised bed gardening.
Earthwood Building School, Part 2, Sept. 6, 1995 67 minutes. The program resumes in the Earthwood house with Jaki and Rohan. Topics include the masonry stove, the earth-roof layers, heavy timber construction, special features in cordwood, Rob describes some of his older books, building codes, thermal qualities of the wall including insulation and mass, caulking and chinking, bathroom and bedroom tour, bicycle pump system, battery system, 12 VDC vs. 115 VAC, bedrooms, sun room.
We are now on Facebook. Sort of. Search Earthwood Building School at the Facebook website. Our previous Facebook site got wiped out, so we need to build it back up from nothing.
Stoneview: How to Build an Eco-Friendly Little Guesthouse is the only book you need to build this particular guest house, a picture of which can be seen on on our Workshops page. Plans and materials list are included, as well as comprehensive fully illustrated step-by-step construction details. The floating slab, octagonal timber framing, cordwood masonry, and the light-weight living roof are all covered.
Cordwood Masonry Special Effects CD ... now available. We are very proud of this new CD. done in Power Point. (You can play it on your 'puter whether you have Power Point or not.) The presentation has 106 color images of special design features, bottle-ends, cordwood textures and the like. A 5000-word commentary tells about the features and how to do them, including a section on various ways of making bottle-ends. The CD is just $20 plus $3 shipping in the U.S.
Earthwood Step by Step CD. This building manual is a 110-page, 100-image. 7500-word Power Point presentation. This Power Point CD can be shown on computers made since 1998 (including Windows 98, Second Edition) whether or not you have a Power Point program. (A Power Point reader is included.) You can view, project or print it. This CD expands and updates the slides or prints (60 captioned images) which we used to offer. This CD will really help anyone wanting to build an Earthwood-type home, one or two stories. It also covers the 16-sided post-and-beam frame. It should be used in combination with my book Earth Sheltered Houses and the Earthwood Plans
Earthwood Plans. These architect-stamped plans are now listed on our Books page. The plans are $210, and include my book Earth Sheltered Houses, which details the step-by-step construction of the Earthwood home. The plans now include a 10-page packet about how to incorporate a 16-sided timber frame in the external walls. This additional material is not stamped by the architect, but should make your local code enforcement officer happy. The frame is easily incorporated into the plans, as many have done throughout North America. If Jaki and I were to build Earthwood again, we would build under the protective cover of a roof supported by a 16-sided frame. You can add the Earthwood Step by Step CD, described above, for just $20, or $230 for the complete package. This is a savings of $20 over separate purchases. The prices for these items have necessarily gone up by $15, as a result of recent postal rates increases. For plans bought here at Earthwood, we can take the $15 off.
Other news:
Stoneview, our octagonal cordwood guesthouse, is available for rental, May to October. Click on Workshops above and scroll down to see a picture and read a description. Stoneview is also available at non-workshop times by special arrangement only, two nights minimum.
How to get here: We are 11 miles NW of Plattsburgh, New York, about an hour’s drive south of Montreal, or 2-1/2 hours north of Albany, NY.
From the south – most of you will be coming from the south – get off Interstate 87 at the 2nd Plattsburgh exit, which is Exit 37. When you get to the light at bottom of the exit ramp, turn left (west) on Route 3. Go one mile to another light at the intersection of State Route 190, also called Military Turnpike. There is a stone-faced bank on your right, a Kinney Drug on your left. Turn right (north) on Route 190. Go 8.5 miles along 190, and when you get to the top of the first hill you’ve seen since leaving Plattsburgh, you will see the Murtagh Hill Road sign on the left. Turn left onto Murtagh Hill Road and go 1.7 miles up this road until you see a standing stone on the right with an "Earthwood" sign on it. Pull in on the right, and park.
From Malone, NY and points west: Go east on Route 11 to Ellenburgh Corners. Turn right onto Route 190 towards Plattsburgh. Travel 15.4 miles on 190, and turn right onto Murtagh Hill Road. Then proceed as above.
From Burlington, Vermont and points east: Take the Grand Isle Ferry across Lake Champlain, arriving on Cumberland Head, just north of Plattsburgh. Follow the road off the Head and cross Route 9. (Landmark: Gus's Restaurant on your right.) Within a quarter mile, get on I-87 south towards Plattsburgh. Go one exit and get off at Exit 38, towards Dannemora, Saranac Lake and Malone (not towards Plattsburgh.) This will put you going west on Rt 374. Immediately cross Rt. 22 at a traffic light and continue west on 374 towards Dannemora, Saranac Lake and Malone. Go about 2.5 miles and turn right at the very next light, State Route 190, also called Military Turnpike. Go 6.5 miles along 190, and when you get to the top of the first hill you’ve seen since leaving the Plattsburgh area, you will see the Murtagh Hill Road sign on the left. Turn left onto Murtagh Hill Road and go 1.7 miles up this road until you see a standing stone on the right with an "Earthwood" sign on it.. Pull in on the right, and park.
Call 518-493-7744, if you need directions from other places.
"Cord"ially,
Rob Roy
Director, Earthwood Building School
366 Murtagh Hill Road,
West Chazy, NY 12992
Tel: (518) 493-7744
Email: robandjaki at yahoo.com (You need to put in the real "at" sign; not included here to avoid blanket spammers.) Telephone is our preferred method of communication, as emails take a lot of time. Questions usually lead to other questions, much more effectively (and quickly) handled by phone.
