c a se st u d i es
Sustainability Ryan Lubbers’ homestead in Hickory Nut Forest
By SuSAN ANDREW There was a time in these mountains — before tract housing and highways and the electrical grid — when folks made their living from the land and built houses using materials they found locally, dwelling in relative harmony with nature. When Ryan Lubbers set out to build his dream home, he wanted to employ these same principles, while making use of modern building and energy technologies to achieve that broad goal. His 1,750-square-foot home, shared with partner Jane Vogelman, is designed to coexist with nature — both by using green technology and by deliberately integrating elements of its natural surroundings, as did the homes of this area’s early settlers. The house is one of three built thus far in Hickory Nut Forest, a 200-acre eco-community in Gerton (near Chimney Rock State Park) where residents share a 10-acre organic garden and heirloom orchard, along with access to miles of trails through forest protected under a conservation easement. It’s hard to overstate this house’s alignment with sustainable living, as practiced by Western North Carolina’s early settlers. From its post-and-beam innards to its clay stucco-and-shingle exterior, Lubbers sought to use materials harvested and processed on the site. Consider the poplar bark he harvested for exterior siding. “That’s been done for a long time,” Lubbers acknowledges. “It’s known to last up to 75 years; under the soffit, it should last indefinitely.” Naturally rot-resistant, the bark can be peeled as soon as the tree starts to leaf out in April, he explains. “It’ll be really slick underneath the cambium layer — it just peels off like a banana.” As the lead builder on the project, Lubbers worked closely with friend and fellow green builder Nate Ballinger, aka Bearwallow Construction. “We wanted to use everything from the site that we possibly could,” Lubbers confirms. The house uses a surprising diversity of wood species, including white and chestnut oak, maple, cherry, silverbell, walnut, birch, sourwood and locust. “It’s just amazing what you can do with the lumber” that other builders would regard as useless, Lubbers says, with obvious pride. “The trick is to use it for its best use.” For instance, some interior trim features boards still sporting the “live edge,” the rough line where the bark meets the wood of a living tree. Raw laurel
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wncgreenbuilding.com | 2012
Wood wonderful: Ryan Lubbers’ dream home takes a few cues from the Hickory Nut Forest community center, shown here; the center features a variety of wood, including white and chestnut oak, cherry, silverbell, sourwood and birch. PHOTO By JONATHAN WELCH
WNC GreeN BuildiNG CouNCil & MouNtaiN Xpress