Calistoga Straw Bale

2247 Mora Avenue. Calistoga. Napa Valley. The first straw bale home built in Calistoga. Completed in the Summer of 2004. The main house is just over 2,000 square feet. The over-riding design feature is simplicity and openness. How can one best bring the outdoors in and the indoors out?

Inspired by the amazing Italian Country Houses seen on a family trip to Venice and Florence. Thick stone walls, simple construction, high-grade materials, craftsmanship, character, natural.

Why Straw Bale?

Thick stone walls are great in the Napa Valley if you're Villa Amorosa (just south of here) and you have about 20 years and a live-in family of Italian stonemasons.

Or if you have about 10 years and lots of cheap (indentured) labor like Alfred Tubbs  had back in the late 1800's when he built Chateau Monthelena Winery (just north of here on Tubbs Lane).

But if you have less than a year and not a lot of stone around (or stone cutters) ... then, well, you might start looking into straw bale. Which we did. (This photo, of course, is not of 2247 Mora. We're still looking for the hard drive which has our actual photos. But this is exactly what the process looked like.)

Straw keeps things cool when it's hot and warm when it's cool. It's all that layered insulation inside of a bale. The walls actually breathe as air flows from the outside in (or inside out, depending upon the temperatures), past the center of  the bale which holds a pretty constant temperature. Straw bale seemed like the best way to get 2-foot-thick walls in the Napa Valley at the start of the 21st Century.

And you can't believe how incredibly quiet a straw bale home -- with good, double-pane windows and doors -- is until you walk inside

But the real inspiration was this book. As mentioned, the home was inspired by a family trip, in the late 20th century, to Europe, where country homes ooze with character and warmth, and feature high-quality materials and a deep sense of personal craftsmanship. We designed and built and constructed the house with the help of this remarkable book, A Pattern Language. The book suggests 253 "patterns," gleaned from worldwide observations of what makes living spaces supremely, well, livable, and together they form a language which ordinary people (like us) could use to communicate with architects and builders. We selected almost 50 patterns from the book that felt right to us, offered them to the Berkeley architect, and he incorporated most of them into the design. We'll explain some of the patterns as we go.

"At the core is the idea that people should design for themselves their own houses, streets and communities. This idea comes simply from the observation that most of the wonderful places of the world were not made by architects but by the people". 

—Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language

(By the way, computer programmers use this same book and the Patterns therein to design elegant computer code. Don't ask me how.)

 The straw bales do not actually support the walls. (That's possible -- legal --  in California only in the high desert where moisture is low or non-existent. In this house, the bales are stacked on steel rods to hold them in place, and tucked between ridiculously-strong steel beams, which make up the frame of the house and do all the supporting. This house is, most likely, the most earthquake-proof home in the Valley (knock on the wood "kindling" which most homes use for framing).

Breathe, baby, breathe. The bale walls are wrapped in wire mesh, then covered with a special stucco -- that has been pre-mixed with natural  limestone pigment (from France!). What that means is that your house breathes. Fresh air constantly moves back and forth from the outside in, and back again. That's good (if you search on Google you can find all sorts of reasons why you don't want to be living in an air-tight   house wrapped in Tyvex). And if you live in this house, you'll feel it.

And there's just something warm and natural and light when you walk into a straw bale home.

Straw is pretty good. And if someone asks you if were born in a barn ... you can say ... sort of.

The Front of the House

It's All About the Sun. While we waited for Calistoga to let us hook up to city sewer lines (it took 2 years), we cut down old pine trees, removed stumps, tore down the original yellow shack in the backyard, and charted what the sun did throughout the year. As a result we sited the home on a precise east-west axis which maximizes the sun's warmth on the front of the home in the winter months and minimizes it (thanks to Spirit Oak) in the summer.

This was taken in May, about 8 AM. At the summer solstice, the sun rises just off the southeast corner of the home (front right in this photo), passes directly over the roof, and sets just off the northwest corner (back left). In the winter, the sun stays low on the southern horizon and illuminates just the facade.

Entry. In the summer, even the morning sun can get mighty toasty. So Michael Ruiz, a good friend and master builder who used to live in Calistoga, designed and built this trellis, with some truly massive redwood timbers. He had reclaimed redwood logs custom-milled at Berry's Mill in Cazadero (on Highway 116 toward the ocean) and topped it with a simple corrugated metal covering. Works wonders (blocks the full sun, but allows the play of light)  and virtually maintenance free.

Colors. The yellow skin of the home, sprayed over the wire-wrapped straw bales, is a natural stucco pre-mixed with natural yellow limestone powder from France (the distributor is located in Petaluma). No paint. The limestone ages naturally without need for further application and allows air to flow back and forth through the bale walls -- which is the secret of straw bale insulation. We chose yellow to match the "golden" hills all around in summer. We chose a silver/white roof (it's a 50-year metal roof, by the way) to match the pale summer sky and frequent play of clouds (Calistoga was a major magnet for cloud painters in the 50's). And the blue door exactly matches the bright blue flowers of the wild (and edible/drinkable) chicory that erupts in yards and along roadways in summer. (The studio was originally the pale green color of olive tree leaves ... but later became red, for no particular reason).

Kiwi Kitchen. Two kiwi vines cavort up the left post as you move to the kitchen door.s. One is supposed to be the female, one a male (necessary for bearing fruit) but wires got crossed somewhere because these kiwi bear only leaves. (Big leaves.)

French Doors. You can enter the kitchen, front and back, via French doors.

More French Doors. And another set of French Doors allows separate entry into the downstairs suite on the east side of the house.

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The Back Yard

North Face. Because of Spirit Oak, no other view of Mt. St. Helena compares to this backyard panorama. Photos don't do it justice. The mountain is just about due north on the compass. Some folks think the mountain is volcanic but it is actually a 5-peaked summit (4,342 feet high) created by uplifting rock from nearby volcanic field eruptions. It's part of the Mayacamas Range (originally called Mt. Mayacamas) and one of the few mountains in the Bay Area that gets snowfall in winter. Great hiking all year round. Great views. Robert Louis Stevenson honeymooned in a cabin there there back in 1880. The mountain creates beautiful cloud formations year round.

Long Shadows. August can roast during the day in Calistoga but the shadows of Spirit Oak always keep the backyard comfortable and inviting.

The Last Pines. Someone planted a line of nearly 100 pine trees in the 50's that formed a tight square around the backyard property lines and along the axis of the current house. By the time we got here, almost all the trees were sick and dying, so cut them down and pulled the stumps. We left a few of the healthier specimens here and behind Spirit Oak to the west. You can see the lone stump of one of the remaining trees that we later had to chop.

Hot Tub anyone? One of the reasons we left these three pines was because it seems like a good spot for a hot tub. Good shade, good protection, great view.

A Big Back 40. Clayton (one half of Clayton and Martha Craeger, immediate neighbors to the west) built this bluebird house which gets new guests every spring and summer. (Bluebirds eat the few insects that nighttime chill doesn't take care of.). This is the view standing at the north property line.

Fig. The parcel just to the east belongs to the former wife of Mike Grgich, the famous winemaker now at Grgich Hills Estate in Rutherford, who made the '73 chardonnay at Chateau Montelena (just a mile by crow flight north on Tubbs Lane) which won best white wine at the historic Paris Wine Tasting of 1976 ... and kick-started the Napa Valley onto its stellar course in the wine world. Mrs. Grgich used to picnic under Spirit Oak as a little girl growing up in Calistoga and she had wanted to buy the Spirit Oak property, but the Greeks did not want to sell it at the time. So she bought this parcel instead and would drive her Mercedes down to the back in the summer months and eat a sandwich. She planted two fig trees here, too, but this is the only one that has survived. (The Greeks only decided to sell the Spirit Oak property to us when the elder brother needed money for mouth surgery. The property was never on the market. Martha Craeger introduced our family to the Greeks, we all met inside the yellow shack one hot summer day, and that was that.)

Vinegar Joe. The grape and house parcel to the northeast was owned, before he dies recently, by a ex-Silicon Valley engineer (one of the early ones) whom everyone around town knew as Vinegar Joe. He grew Merlot and planted three of these wispy trees at the edge of our properties right after we moved in.

Table Grapes. This old vine is at least 40 years old ... and the white grapes are delicious. Many neighbors have taken cuttings from this baby to start their own summer dessert factory. A few oak trees are starting to shade out the vine and it's less productive every year. It's ready for a new cutting at a sunnier location.

The Front Yard

Public, Private. It's said that it's not good feng shui to have your driveway run straight from the street to your front door, so the energy is diverted here with a slight bend. The land is quite open here in the front yard but the buildings separate the private, back space from prying eyes. The tall trees in back only hint at what that space might offer. The ditch that runs across the head of the land was built by the City and it runs full of water from the first rains late in the year into April and May. All that water breeds weeds so bring your weed whacker.  But under those weeds is a bed of river stones which we brought in from Mark West Creek ten years ago.

Roses & Zin to the West. The front yard, the southern side of the land, is still pretty much wide open. We planted 3 clones of Zinfandel (Primitivo, Foppiano and Deaver), 156 vines in six rows, three years ago and they should provide at least a barrel of wine (25 cases) next year (and possibly this year). We put roses at the street side of each row, a mixture of bushes and climbers. (That's Merik and Carol Lee's winery and vineyard -- Cab -- and guest cottage beyond the berm.)

Olive Berm. When Merik and Carol Lee dug their backyard pool, they needed somewhere to put their excavated dirt (a lot of dirt). We arranged a solution whereby they could build this berm with their dirt on our side of their driveway ... and they planted the olive trees on the berm.

Why Zin? The clay soil that has washed down and piled up over the eons from the hills to the east is super sloppy in wet winter months and super porous and rock hard in the summer heat. Sauvignon Blanc is probably best for this clay but, before we put the vines in, the winemaker at Satori asked me if that's what we want to drink. "Plant what you want to drink," he advised. Zin it is. And Zin is hardy enough for anything. It also prefers head-pruning to limit its leaf and cluster production, which requires less hardware. Merik grows good Cab to the west. And there's more Cab across the street.

Un-tamed and ready for vision. We had originally contracted with an amazing landscaper from New Zealand, who specialized in waterscapes, to build a large fresh-water pond that would take up most of the land to the east of the driveway here. It would have created a 4-season ecoscape with a wondrous mix of trees, water plants, fish and fowl. One of the Patterns suggests creating destinations such as these ... and this would have been a delightful destination year round but especially in the summer for cooling dips. The designer, as fate would have it, developed a fatal disease and the project fell through. but the land is still perfect for a pond. The clay soil minimizes the difficulty and cost of creating a proper bed, and there's plenty of water underground to keep it filled -- even in the hottest, driest months of the year (August-October) the fresh water table is less than 20 feet below the surface. Merik, next door, dug the well by hand for his vineyard in August. There's always plenty of water here, which is not always the case with many parts of Calistoga.

Spirit Oak

We call the majestic valley oak tree in the backyard Spirit Oak. It is the tallest of its kind remaining in the Napa Valley and it is over 400 years old. We purchased the 2-acre parcel in 2000 from an elderly Greek family, a brother and two sisters, some of whom are still around and own property to the west on Mora Avenue. They bought this parcel in the 50's and always intended to replace the small, yellow shack that was tucked just to the left and in the shadow of Spirit Oak. A Pattern Language suggests you resist the urge to  site your home on the most beautiful section of your property and, instead, place it where the building itself will enhance the beauty. So we tore down the shack and moved the site south where the land was empty and  flat.

You really can't grasp the size of Spirit Oak until you see it in relation to mere human beings. The Wapoo camped and celebrated under this tree when they came to swim in the natural hot mineral pools that dotted Calistoga.

What happens when you just let a tree grow? Some apparently reach out an arm for balance. Spirit Oak was pruned for her first time just after we purchased the land. Only dead and overly heavy branches were cut away. The trimmers refused any mechanization, using only climbing ropes and hand saws to give her a trim. "Just enough for her to enjoy her old age," the owner said.

Only a couple of branches have fallen since 2000. We planted fescue beneath her canopy to hold soil in place and protect roots from the elements.

We call this the oak grove. Spirit Oak is continually trying to propagate herself over here.

We've let the strong ones in the sun grow and cull out the shady suckers. Oaks grow slowly.

With your back to Spirit Oak, you can see what she sees.

The Italian Kitchen

Cucina Italiano. What would a living space inspired by Italian country farmhouses be without a simple, open Italian country kitchen? The kitchen is always the most lived-in and loved space in these homes, and this kitchen was designed so that you might never want to leave. Here whatever is outside is invited in.

I'm just passing through. French doors front and back, and zillions of tall windows, makes this kitchen feel like you are always outside, inside or out.

Let the sun shine in. Light spills in from three sides of this space. Morning sun to the front, sunsets to the back.

Mt. St. Helena beckons. It's good to offer a daily afternoon sacrifice to the mountain gods. A crisp chardonnay is always well received.

Five Patterns in one. #1: wall niches. A perfect place to put favorite images or icons. (Or ipods.) #2: thick walls.  so you can have window ledges or window seats, or both. #3: divided windows: which create far more interest and variety than single pane windows #4: window seats: become a magnet for reading, resting and ruminating. #5: tall ceilings: (13 feet!) create a sense of vastness even though the floor space is relatively small.

Open space. Who needs furniture? Two ovens. Instant-on electric counter top stove. (We used to be gas snobs for cooking ... but this range top is terrific.)

Who gets to cook tonight? Top chef view. Horizontal spacefor friends to help prep or just watch the show with a glass of Zin. Space to serve. Space to eat. Space to dance. Space, space, space.

Where to put it all. Here. Under the island. In the pantry. Above the pantry. Above the office nook (at right) ... where cabinet leads into an extended attic space ... which can also be reached with a second entry upstairs. (Good for holiday and camping stuff.)

Who gets to wash? Dish therapy.

But aren't the concrete floors cold? They're the color of Italian pavers bathing in the Tuscan sun, and you control the warmth with radiant liquid heat running beneath your feet. How nice is it on a cold, wet winter morning to come downstairs in your bare feet and it feels like you just stepped on a sun-kissed brick? Very nice. (And it's economical ... because the concrete holds the heat long after you turn off the juice.)

Check out another Pattern here: walking from a shorter space into a larger, taller space. Why is this good? Who knows? You'll have to read the book to find out. But it works.

Buried treasure. All the blueprints and manuals and permits and docs for the home/land security are secreted under the pillows, beneath the hidden trap door. You'll need an index finger to open it. (You'll see.)

Someone is watching you. It knows everything you do ... and it doesn't care.