A home in the forest. That’s the vision that my partner and I have dreamed up for ourselves. Nestled in the forest, our home will be a place to retreat, a place to explore, and a place to call home. We see ourselves working our gardens, forging trails, and practising hobbies out in the sun all day then cuddling up cozy at night, looking out at the stars. 

In early 2021, our woodland dreams lead to browsing real estate listings and then the pandemic-fueled market spiral galvanized us to action. Our dreams quickly began to take form as we were swept up in the search, but looking about, we weren’t quite finding anything that fit the bill. 

Key to our vision is a commitment to sustainability and self-sufficiency. We are both city-dwellers who grew up in the country and feel the pull to be closer to nature. As we looked about, we bandied about the idea of building a home and came across passive house and net-zero concepts for green building and were intrigued. 

For the uninitiated, a passive house is a super-insulated, airtight home oriented to take advantage of passive heating from the sun to reduce the use of mechanical heating systems. Essentially acting like a thermos, it retains heat in the winter and holds in cool air in the summer. A net-zero house is one that uses as much energy as it produces (such as through solar power) and follows many of the same principles as a passive house. For me, the chance to lower our carbon footprint with a high-efficiency, solar-powered home pulled at my environmentalist heartstrings while the chance to reduce reliance on the grid appealed to Sam’s independent streak. 

This blog is the story of how we’ve come to build a green house in rural Ottawa, a project we’re deep into the weeds of as I begin this blog in September 2022. Building a home is a daunting, murky endeavor with lots of twists and turns and endless research. There’s no one clear path to take, with a million decisions to make along the way, both big and small, and it can be tough to figure out where to even begin, especially for two people with no construction experience. In my research, I’ve been grateful to those who’ve come before and shared their experience and hope to share forward.

In this blog, I’ll share how we got here, the options we considered (and sometimes reconsidered), the decisions we made, why we made them, and where we went wrong. I hope that, in sharing our experience, it will help others looking for answers the way others have helped us as we make our home in the Marlborough Forest House.

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