Wednesday, May 20, 2020 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
Building a home together in challenging times
By Jodi Schneider
Correspondent
After a sudden and dis-
orienting national shutdown,
many of us are at home a lot
more than we are used to. As
the days pass, you might find
yourself wanting to engage in
more productive activities.
Partners Julia de Castra
and Michael Grant have
taken the word <productive=
to another level, diving head-
first into the world of design,
building their own unique
home stud by stud on the out-
skirts of Sisters.
<In these challenging
times with many stuck at
home, Julia and I are so grate-
ful we are forced to work
outside and stay focused on
building our shelter,= Grant
told The Nugget. <The work
is grueling, but we cannot
complain.=
Grant is a trained Passive
House designer from Santa
Fe, New Mexico.
Passive House (known as
Passivhaus in Europe) is an
advanced energy-efficiency
standard that produces build-
ings and houses with superior
indoor air quality and thermal
comfort, reducing required
heating energy use.
The program was first
developed in Germany and is
quickly becoming a standard
in many parts of the world. A
passive house is designed to
be extremely energy-efficient
so that it doesn9t take a lot of
power to heat or cool.
Grant, a philosophy
major, became fascinated
with design building and got
hooked on green sustainable
design.
Grant said, <It9s a design
protocol that is cutting edge
with up to 90 percent home
energy reduction. It9s a build-
ing science focus.=
Most of the Passive House
work takes place in the design
stage, because every system
needs to work together to
produce the benefits of the
methodology.
Grant was about 28
when he apprenticed with a
designer builder in Santa Fe.
<I basically worked on
at least 100 houses. I also
learned drafting and design
and self-studied in architec-
ture along with Computer
Aided Design (CAD),= he
said. <That led me into design
build with over 20 years9
experience.=
De Castro grew up in
Brazil.
She said, <We met at the
wedding of my oldest brother
and Michael9s half-sister in
New York in 1990. We fell in
love and I moved to Santa Fe
with Michael and he built us a
beautiful home there.=
De Castro loves to cook
and enrolled in culinary
school as a hobby, but even-
tually landed in physical
therapy.
The couple relocated to
Sisters four years ago.
<We visited the Pacific
Northwest on and off for
years,= De Castro said. <We
wanted to live there, but we
didn9t want the rain.=
De Castro noted that she
knows a lot about homemak-
ing and that this is the first
time she became involved in
the building process itself.
<This has been really
invigorating, and really
hard,= she explained, <It9s
been beautiful and awful with
great and sad moments, but
mostly it9s been rewarding
and I9m finally finding my
beat. The silver lining is we
are really expanding our com-
munication skills through all
this.
<My favorite part of build-
ing so far has been framing.
The whole foundation pro-
cess was pretty brutal with a
lot of digging, dealing with
dirt and rocks. I can see why
carpenters love working with
wood and there is something
very magical about the whole
framing process. I9ve been
noticing that adaptation and
acclimatization play a huge
role in my experience of the
different building chapters.
For example, working on
the roof has been quite chal-
lenging even though I never
PHOTO BY JODI SCHNEIDER
Julia de Castra and Michael Grant are building their Sisters home by
themselves in isolation.
felt really scared of heights.
And now that we have done
a few of the framed roofs in
the house it is becoming less
scary.=
De Castro is excited about
the triple pane windows.
Grant noted, <As soon
as you go to a super insu-
lated home then you need to
match that with your window
performance.=
But there is something
very unusual about these tri-
ple pane windows: They have
a spider web coating.
De Castro said, <One of
the top three killer of birds is
glass collisions and we have
integrated a unique technol-
ogy for our windows that
originated in Germany.=
Orb weaver spiders, com-
mon worldwide, build their
distinctive webs using strands
of silk with UV reflective
properties. Because birds
can see ultraviolet light, the
reflective threads prevent
them colliding with the web.
The windows are made
of glass sheeting with a
special ultraviolet (UV)
reflective coating that is
almost invisible to the human
eye but looks like a spider9s
web to birds, so they most
likely won9t collide with the
window.
Grant needs loads of
equipment to build, such as
scaffolding and a forklift.
<Kris Calvin who runs
Earthwood Timber Frame
Homes of Oregon has helped
us out by lending us equip-
ment,= he said. <We horse
trade; I help him raise the
timber frame houses when
he9s building, and he lends
me the right tools.
<Plus, we9ve been
delighted by our local Sisters-
based Deschutes County
building inspector, Todd
Russell, who shares our inter-
ests and is a complete and
very knowledgeable energy
geek himself.9
With a lot of luck the
two hope to have their
Passive House two-bedroom
2,500-square-foot home com-
pleted by December.
Students
win $500
for safety
video
Students at Sisters High
School won $500 for their
first-place video titled
<Canteen Catastrophe= in an
annual safety video contest
that promotes young worker
safety and the importance of
speaking up.
The winning video, which
is in a one-shot-style format,
follows a worker 4 played
by Shelby Larson 4 as she
walks through a workplace
kitchen noticing hazards, but
not speaking up. The video
rewinds to the beginning and
the worker informs someone
about each of the hazards so
they can be fixed.
The members of the win-
ning Sisters High School
team are: Jackson Griffin;
Shelby Larson; Colton
Seymour; Skylar Wilkins;
Sydney Wilkins.
<We chose this part of
workplace safety because
most of us have jobs in the
food industry and so these
are real problems that we
encounter every day,= said
Sydney Wilkins.
Sisters High School also
won a matching amount of
prize money.
<We think this message
is good for teen workers
because if they find them-
selves in an unsafe work
environment and don9t
speak up, they can possibly
get injured,= said Jackson
Griffin.
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