MoreSun

By most accounts, Stephen Morrison lives in the middle of nowhere, the crooked no-man’s land clinging to the side of the southern Blue Ridge escarpment where North Carolina, Georgia, and South Carolina meet. 

When Morrison landed in the region 10 years ago as a river guide on the Chattooga River, he found the perfect refuge from the Atlanta sprawl that had enveloped his childhood home.

“As a little kid I remember thinking I lived in the country, and by the time I was in high school there were probably three Blockbuster [video stores] within five minutes of my house,” Morrison said. “Seeing that transition made me realize how fast we were consuming the surface of the planet.”

Morrison set out to create a 10-acre homestead where he could work, play and raise a family, not only treading lightly on the earth himself but also helping others in their own quest for sustainable living — starting with their homes.

A master carpenter, Morrison runs a timber frame construction business called MoreSun, harnessing solar energy to power an arsenal of heavy-duty woodworking tools used to craft the timber frame.

Even without the solar power, Morrison’s style of building is an organic one.

“[Building timber frames] is an ancient craft that goes back thousands of years,” Morrison said. “But it pretty much disappeared with the invention of the saw mill and affordable nails. You could build houses with itty bitty pieces of wood and just nail them together.”

With Morrison’s massive timbers and whole tree trunks, smoothed and shaped for his timber frame homes, it’s easy to see why the building technique is so alluring for mountain settings.

True timber frame construction means no nails, no screws, and no glue. Just pure, clean wood, cut and notched with mortise and tenon joints. Add the solar energy harnessed to run the power tools and throw in the sustainably harvested logs, and the eco-footprint of the timber homes is as light as it comes.

Morrison builds his style of timber frame homes across the Southern Appalachians, spending months hand-crafting the timbers on site in his solar-powered shop before erecting the structure on his client’s lot. In recent years, Morrison has seen a definite shift in the demand for green building.

“When I wanted to get into a greener version of building it wasn’t in the mainstream conversation,” Morrison said. “If I tried to talk about green building to clients, I seemed like some weird hippie. But now, even if you don’t care about the environment, you’ve at least heard the term ‘green building.’ We are definitely seeing a transition in the green end of building.”

Morrison found his own eco-ethics through a love for the outdoors — camping, hiking, paddling, and rock climbing. Being in nature made him realize how much the ecosystem was suffering.

“It always seemed so obvious to me we were destroying habitat and consuming resources at a ridiculous rate,” Morrison said. “I’ve always found it surprising that it hasn’t been on everyone’s radar for a long time. Now that we are at a crisis phase of what we have done to the environment, people are starting to catch on.”

When Morrison travels to home shows across the Southeast to showcase MoreSun, he says everybody has this mental image of little solar panels mounted to all the power tools.

In fact, a row of shiny space-age solar panels lines the hill above his shop. The Morrisons are connected with the power grid, allowing Morrison to tap extra power if the shop is running at full tilt on a dark and rainy day when solar is weak. But if the sun is shining and tools are idle, Morrison’s solar panels pump out a surplus. The electricity flows back across the grid, giving Morrison a credit with the power company.

In the sustainable spirit, Morrison puts his leftover wood to use. Sawdust gets swept up and sprinkled in the composting toilet, while bigger scraps are burned in a wood furnace that functions like a giant radiator to heat both his workshop and home, shared with his wife, Chanda, and two little girls.

The motto “use and reuse” permeates most aspects of their life. Chickens gobble down table scraps, and even the landscaping pulls its own weight.

“I’ve tried not to plant anything I can’t eat eventually,” Morrison said, pointing out figs, blueberries, grape vines and apple, peach, and cherry trees scattered through the woodland setting.

His philosophy landed Morrison a job with Hamlet Fort, a second-home owner in Little Switzerland, N.C. Fort wanted to salvage wormy chestnut from a century-old cabin on the site of his new home.

 “He loved working to reclaim old lumber,” Fort said. “We were both on the same page: to show off and reuse this lumber that was so old, so rare, and so beautiful.”

When Morrison bought land and put down roots near his beloved Chattooga River, he lived in a tent while building a timber-frame house for his future family. In a stroke of luck, Morrison scored timbers cut from the nearby national forest in a sustainable logging operation by the Chattooga Conservancy, an environmental group.

The loggers deployed a team of draft horses to haul out the trees, leaving only a narrow trail and hoof prints rather than the telltale swath of bulldozers left by most operations.

“It was amazing to watch them work,” Morrison said.

Morrison hunts down sustainably harvested wood for his clients, cut using methods that tread lightly on the land.

There’s even an industry standard for sustainable timber — it comes with the official stamp of the Forest Stewardship Council. While it was once hard to find, green building has become so popular now.

“I know 50 different suppliers I could call,” Morrison said.

To find Stephen Morrison and MoreSun Custom Woodworking, visit www.moresundesigns.com.