.
"Not too many people get deer prints on their roof," Kathy Galvin said.
Their roof is at ground level. Their splendid house -- 24 years in the making -- fits into a hillside on their 50-acre parcel on Indian Trails Road.
The house is a labor of love. The Galvins did nearly all the work on it themselves, other than hiring a demolition crew to blow a hole in the hillside and getting cement trucks to come up their long, twisty driveway to fill the forms that created their walls.
But now, with the house in the very last stages of completion, the Galvins are selling it for $1.2 million. Living in New Milford has become too cold for them, and they've bought a place in Sahuarita, Ariz., outside of Tucson.
"Life changes," Jim Galvin said.
When the Galvins decided to build a solar home -- also called in-hill construction -- people were re-thinking
home construction in light of the first oil embargo.
"
The energy crunch came in the 1970s," said Jim Galvin, who ran a construction management business until his recent retirement. "We decided this is what we wanted."
Having found their hill, the Galvins spent two years just getting a driveway in.
"We were thinking `Oh my god, what have we gotten into?' " Kathy Galvin said.
They then hired a company to blast out the side of a hill to build their southward-facing home. It was done without a demolition net, and everything -- tree, rocks and dirt -- went flying.
"It was scary," Kathy Galvin said.
"We were left with a pile of rocks bigger than our house," Jim Galvin said.
Slowly, the house took shape. With the site cleared of rocks, they could dig a foundation and pour the concrete for the slab the
house sits on. They then built the forms for the concrete walls.
"We have 322 yards of concrete and 1,200 yards of rebar," Jim Galvin said of the reinforcing iron rods that make the concrete strong.
Because they could only afford a small mortgage, the Galvins have done as much work on the house as they could by themselves.
For the first 14 years, they lived in a trailer next to the house. Jim Galvin set up a carpentry shop and taught himself to be a cabinet maker, cutting and installing all the
home's beautifully detailed cherry and oak fittings himself.
"You get a book, you read it and learn how to do things," he said. "Give me a book and I can learn how to do brain surgery."
The finished product has pale concrete walls, high ceilings and rich red Brazilian cherry flooring. There's a massive stone fireplace in the center of the
house, made of the rock blown out of the site during the demolition. The
house's south windows and the skylights in the back of the house fill its 4,163 square feet of space with light. In all, Galvin figures the house cost $300,000 to build, spread out over 24 years.
And, as planned, the house is remarkable energy-efficient. In winter, the concrete walls hold the heat -- the Galvins said they can heat the entire
house with one wood stove. (They installed a 1,000-gallon oil tank as a back-up).
In the summer, the opposite happens. Once the
house cools down, it stays cool. Only a few times a year -- during a prolonged 90-degree heat spell -- have they found it necessary to turn on the
home's small window air-conditioner, for a few hours
"The heat gets absorbed into the concrete in summer," Jim Galvin said.
The Galvins admit it's very nice to walk out of their
house in the summer, and sit on the terrace in front, with the ridge lines of the Housatonic River Valley in the distance. Jim Galvin has built himself a small airstrip in back, that allows him to fly his light sport plane from
home.
But their
house is also decorated with motifs from the Southwest. Arizona beckons.
"We love the house," Kathy Galvin said. "But we hate the winters. We think of the
house now as a 401K for our retirement."