Paraplegic's green vision leads to home being built bale by bale

To take me on a tour of his future home, Matthew Nistico steers his wheelchair through a river of red mud, in heavy rain.

No problem. Nistico, 32, is the kind of guy who’s deterred by very little. Not a downpour. Not the daunting task of building his own house. Certainly not the drunken driver who made him a paraplegic three years ago.

“We started last fall,” he says, gesturing toward the half-finished house. “Dug the whole foundation by hand.”

“We” is a crew of day laborers, volunteers and friends who are helping Nistico realize his dream — a dream born of tragedy.

In 2000 Nistico graduated from Clemson with a degree in psychology. He moved to northern Virginia, bought a condo, started a career with a company that accredits schools. He helped tend community gardens and played ultimate Frisbee with friends. It was a good life, and it ended when he was hit by a car one spring evening while riding his bike.

During his yearlong recovery at his parents' home in Florida, Nistico mulled the future. Despite his disability, he wanted to be self-supporting. He wanted to live a sustainable, ecological lifestyle. He wanted to return to Clemson.

After reading up on “green” construction, Nistico started sketching plans for a passive solar house with straw bale walls.

“Straw bale is a uniquely American architectural form,” he says, his dark eyes blazing with the intensity of someone who’s found his passion. “And it’s made with an agricultural byproduct that’s readily available.”

Early 1900s homesteaders in Nebraska built bale houses out of necessity. The art died out but was revived in the 1980s. After talking to building officials in Anderson, Pickens and Oconee counties, Nistico thinks his straw bale house will be the Upstate’s first.

Tucked into woods off a winding road, the house has a wall of windows facing south, for maximum solar exposure. In the front yard a series of stone-walled terraces are already in place, waiting for Nistico’s first garden.

“I hope to grow most of my own food,” he says.

With the goal of using as much local material as possible, Nistico scrounged scrap lumber from nearby construction sites. His straw bales, 400 or so, came from Denver Downs Farm. After being stacked atop one another, the bales are trimmed with a chain saw, reinforced with bamboo poles, chinked with “cob” (a mixture of straw, water and soil), then covered with three coats of a natural plaster made from sand, straw and hydrated lime — all applied by hand. The result: a thick wall that has high thermal and acoustic insulation, and superior fireproof rating.

There’s still a lot of interior work to do — erecting interior bale walls, staining the concrete floor, installing wheelchair-accessible counters and cabinets — but Nistico’s money is running low. He’s thinking about hosting a straw bale workshop where people can learn by working, for a fee.

He also hopes more volunteers will show up. Earlier this fall, when Nistico invited Clemson’s fledgling green community to help, a few workers came. He could use more. If you’d like to help, e-mail him at elessarrex@hotmail.com.

Be prepared to get muddy — and to be inspired by a young man with a dream.

Jeanne Malmgren can be reached at malmgrenjeanne@yahoo.com.