Info-to-Build-On A History of Shelter Institute And the Evolution of the Owner-Builder. by Raoul Hennin April 21, 2006

2005 Timber Framing Class at Shelter Institute

It was 1974 when Pat and Patsy opened the doors of their new business, the Shelter Institute in midcoast Maine, with a simple conviction that entrepreneurial owner-builders could SAVE money by building their dream houses. My Dad, Pat Hennin, an immigrant from France and a graduate of University of Maine Law School, believed mightily in the freedom that comes from education. Mom grew up in Long Island, New York, and with a head for business, and degree in mathematics, she always managed to put a civilizing polish on our pioneering lifestyle.

That year, the price of oil more than doubled to $40/barrel* after 30 years of stable pricing. To save oil, New Englanders reinstalled their wood stoves. Maine actually ran out of seasoned firewood in the mid seventies, and green wood caused many chimney fires. Crude oil hit a high of $97.50* by 1981 (* inflation-adjusted 2005 dollars - www.ioga.com). The Energy Crisis changed the rules of home design across the country.

Energy efficiency was a central theme of Shelter Institute classes which garnered the attention of an energy-panicked world. But practical craftsmanship, durability, common sense, and livability were the guiding principles of the Shelter Institute. At the age of seven, I helped raise our timber frame home in the woods of Woolwich, Maine. My father hand-hewed the beams. My mother calculated the load bearing capacity of each beam he made. Together we placed the beams in the house and joined them into a passive solar cape with glass walls that brought in the outdoors. They built this home for $4,800 by using their own labor. Newspaper reporters, magazine photographers, book authors and TV crews were frequent visitors. By 1979, an average class at the Shelter Institute overflowed with more than 100 students from across the nation. The pace was fast and furious, as my parents struggled with the demands of a growing business, and a growing family. The New York Times printed an article about Shelter Institute in 1981 which is posted online at: SCHOOLS TEACH HOMEBUILDING-NYT'81)

Featured in 30 Energy Efficient Houses You Can Build, our 1974 cape offered 1,000 s.f.

Pat and Patsy decided to teach others how to build their Dream Houses.

My brother, Gaius, and I were constant companions and "firewood" cutters. We heated the super-insulated, passive solar house each winter with only 2 chords of wood that we cut 2 years in advance. In 1978, my sister, Blueberry was born, changing the family dynamic forever. Blueberry's arrival made our house too small, and brought about a paradigm shift in my parent's thinking. They sold the rustic, passive solar cape, after 7 years, for ten times the initial investment and moved to an 1860 saltwater farm that continues to occupy their spare time to this day.

In the eighties, the price of oil withdrew from scary price spikes and Shelter Institute refined its focus. Pat and Patsy continued to teach entrepreneurial approach to home construction, but scaled back the class size to more manageable numbers with fewer employees. We began to offer more specialized building classes in varying formats, including timber framing and small house building. We also began to sell the timber frames produced in class, while continuing to espouse energy efficiency in a world that cared as little as oil cost.

By the early nineties, my brother and I had returned from college with degrees in physics and engineering to join the business my parents had founded. We built our own timber frame houses even as we continued to build for clients and to teach others how to build their dream houses. We experimented with and refined cutting edge building technologies like stress-skin panel envelopes, radiant heat floors, new concrete forming techniques, and rain screen siding principles. And we celebrated a traditional sense of home with authentic timber frame structures. In the new millenium, sister Blueberry rejoined the family enterprise as well, building a passive solar timber frame OFF THE GRID, shifting our ideas about of self-sufficiency.

In 1996, Pat and Patsy sold the city block in Bath that had been Shelter Institute's home and moved the business to a wooded 50-acre campus in Woolwich on the banks of tidal Montsweag Brook. We built a 4,000 s.f. retail and classroom facility as well as a 8,000 s.f. timber framing workshop. Today Shelter Institute hosts various construction activities on campus, and students can explore wooded trails and canoe tidal estuaries of a nature preserve.

Through the years, we have adapted our business to grow consistently in a rapidly changing, interconnected world. In the midst of a battle with cancer, Patsy is surrounded by her family. Pat continues to guide the business even as he cares for Patsy. My brother, Gaius, a Professional Engineer, has refined our timber framing operations into a focal point of our lives, engineering, crafting, and raising dozens of elegant, traditional timber frames each year. Blueberry manages our retail store of fine woodworking tools and building supplies while offering full real estate brokerage services to our students and clients. I market our services to anyone who will listen. In our house building classes, we continue a rigorous exploration of design and construction techniques to enhance an owner-builder's ability to SAVE money while building his or her dream house.

Perhaps the most important development over the past thirty years of residential construction is the evolution of readily available labor-saving tools and technologies. Thirty years ago, an owner-builder saved money by gathering friends and relatives to help lift and assemble the heavy structural beams in a single, exhausting day of old-fashioned barn raising. While effective and romantic, this event could also be risky and stressful. To enclose the structure then typically involved several months of strenuous physical work. Shelter Institute owner-builders emerged from their ordeal in the best physical condition of their lives with little or no mortgage. Shelter Institute's Timber Framing crew uses remote-control cranes (with 95' reach!) to save time and labor on-site. Prefabricating the components in our shop vastly improves the quality, fit and finish of the home.

In 2004, Mom and Dad's most recent house: a timber frame bungalow in the Caribbean.

Shelter Institute's crew helps Owner-Builders save time with efficient techniques.