Each year more than 20 percent of the new homes in the United States are owner-built, and this course is designed for those of you who are preparing to build soon or are planning to build sometime in the future. It's also ideal for people who wish to design their own home and subcontract out all or part of the work, and for those choosing homebuilding as a career. Even though most owner-builders lack the years of experience of a professional contractor, they are often able to build a better house for less money. In this course, you'll learn to use the tools and techniques of a successful owner-builder.

The best way to learn something is to do it. With that in mind, we've designed our curriculum so that students aren't subject to 3 or 4 hours of uninterrupted classroom sessions trying to absorb information they could easily find in books. Rather, we intersperse the morning classroom sessions with demonstrations, slide programs, discussions, mock-ups, and models, and we encourage student participation whenever possible.

For example, during the house-framing part of the course, you'll first have the process explained carefully by an experienced builder. Then, you'll view slides to see the process happening, step-by-step. Next, you'll examine full-scale mock-ups of framing sections, and finally you'll go into the shop or to the building yard or site to actually frame up a wall section, so that you can own the information and techniques you just learned. We use this type of learning process whenever we can: in design, in calculating beam sizes, in acquiring plumbing and electrical skills, in laying out a house foundation, in orienting for solar exposure, and in cutting rafters, for example. Our aim is to provide as many learning opportunities as possible so that when you leave Heartwood, you go with enough skill and knowledge so that you can continue your learning on a solid foundation.

Following these morning sessions, we share lunch together (these are fine, wholesome meals — both vegetarian and non-vegetarian — and if you have special needs, we try to fulfill them); after lunch, there is time to talk for a while on the porch or to browse in our extensive building library. About 1:00 p.m., we go to the building site and join in on the construction of a custom house involving timber framing, conventional framing, and many other interesting building techniques. In this hands-on kind of training, opportunities to learn are everywhere; if you are keen to learn, you won't be disappointed.

Course Outline

The general course topics include:

• an introduction to tools, power tool use and safety practices
• vocabulary and materials
• site preparation and solar orientation
• foundation types and how to build them
• structural principles and calculating timber sizes
• building code requirements
• framing systems: stud, post-and-beam, double wall
• roof framing and finishing
• insulation and vapor barriers
• options for interior and exterior finishes
• installing doors and windows
• building stairs
• plumbing and electrical systems and skills

The design curriculum is woven into the entire course, concentrating on teaching you to develop problem solving and visualization skills that are useful at every stage of the building project. Our goal is to design houses that are affordable, efficient in the use of energy and materials, and beautiful and healthy to live in. Beauty in a home results from naturalness, simplicity, good proportions and attention to detail. Without them, a house is a mere building.

We look carefully at the problems of staying within budget, estimating costs and time, and being your own contractor. We explore passive solar heating and cooling techniques, including the latest information on superinsulation, with a discussion of what we feel works and how to design for it. Finally, the entire process comes alive through the use of universal design patterns developed by Christopher Alexander in his works, The Timeless Way of Building and A Pattem Language, which form the basis of a human-scale and ageless architecture.

Text:

The textbook for the course is Sam Clark’s The Real Goods Independent Builder, a copy of which will be sent to you upon receipt of your registration.