Winter Panel Chile is a remarkable company, small but very efficient. They manufacture SIPs (Structural Insulated Panels) under license from Winter Panel, Vermont, one of the pioneering companies in this building technology. They have worked in some of the most challenging environments in the Americas (for example, building a light house on Cape Horn where the winds reached 120 knots).

 

As befits a former admiral, Claudio Aguayo runs a tight ship: his construction crews have worked together for more than ten years, and they can do it all. Each Winter Panel Chile carpenter (or "maestro") also has a specialty, plumbing, electricity, ceramic tiles, or fine finish carpentry.

 

You can learn more about Winter Panel Chile by visiting their web site,  www.winterpanel.cl

Pedro Staudt, a talented young architect, and ace fly-fisherman,  who lives and works in Coyhaique, the capital of central Chilean Patagonia, not only translated my initial SketchUp models of the house into proper AutoCad architectural plans; but time and again, during our long construction summer, Pedro, saved the day by solving tricky transportation and supply problems for us.

 

Working from Pedro Staud's plans, Dereck McColl, a structural engineer in Viña del Mar, calculated all the myriad details of building a solid house in such an exposed and challenging location. He figured out the complex headers to support our large lakeside windows; speced the steel reinforced foundation slab to meet Chile's strictest seismic codes, and made sure that Patagonian winds couldn't turn our large roof overhangs into giant wings.

 

The beautiful kitchen cabinets made of lenga and coihue wood, native to Patagonia, were actually built 1500 miles away from Casa Mármol, in a workshop near Viña del Mar, by Alberto Thiess, a master cabinet maker.

 

In keeping with the marble theme of our house, inspired by the natural marble rock of our point, and the marble caves at the lake level beneath the house, we opted for marble counter tops in the kitchen. These fabulous counter tops of white Carrara marble were produced by a small family-owned stone business called Sugerama, also near Viña, by Gustavo and Salvador Ugarte.

 

The large windows demanded a special solution: aluminum storefront type frames manufactured with a special thermal break between the inner and outer metal framework. These great window frames were fabricated and then shipped to Chile by Stan and Jeannie Crowder of Hogue's Glass, in Alamosa, Colorado.

 

The glazing for the large window grids, and the tilt-turn operable windows are from ThermoHaus in Santiago de Chile.