The Illegality of Environmentally Friendly Lifestyles

Volume One, our local culture and entertainment magazine, has an interesting story about a cob home. In Sawyer County Wisconsin, Febe Simone Dancier and Machel Piper built a 175-square-foot cob home that they describe as a “sanctuary” for healing. Constructed over a six month period for less than $1,000, the environmentally friendly home features a composting toilet. The Sawyer County Zoning Administration, however, has been ready to bulldoze the home. It seems that they never applied for a land use permit and the home did not meet certain county codes. These codes include a minimum 500 square foot requirement and a code-compliant septic system. In the meantime, the owners of the Sun Spirit Log Homes offered to build them a log home. On the positive side, the zoning people had no problem with the cob construction.

Piper and Dancier are working on a children’s novel about their experience and plan to fight for legalizing smaller homes and composting toilets.

From the article, I cannot tell whether the cob structure will still be torn down. If it remains standing, I would love to see it before we build another cob oven. My husband claims that if they had been two good ol’ boys and said the structure was a hunting cabin, there would have been no problem. There are dozens of people living in hunting cabins up in the North Woods of Wisconsin. Their real problem was that they were up front about their intentions to use the cob building as a home.

For the record, I write this from my 3,000-square-foot home. This home includes two businesses – my husband’s office is in the attic and my studio is on the second floor. It is more space than we need for our family, but trying to maintain an old Victorian, rather than building new in the ‘burbs, has some ecological cachet.