California man's home is his castle

SNELLING, Calif. — Most days, the talk in Snelling among the farmers and almond growers along a stretch of two-lane blacktop 18 miles from the nearest onramp concerns heat units — as hot summer days are known — and the hull split that signals the approach of almond-harvest season.

But there is also the Kasteel Noz, the turreted brick castle with two towers and a moat that Casper Noz, 51, a contractor who was born in the Netherlands, has been building by himself almost completely by hand on weekends for the past 20 years.

"They think it's odd, but everyone just accepts it now," Dan Mallory, who runs the nearby Roberts Ferry Nut Co., said of the ultimate do-it-yourself project in his midst, from which a turret-silhouetted view of Half Dome in Yosemite can sometimes be glimpsed through the haze. "Casper is very meticulous."

Noz, a father of three, has been known to throw an occasional flaming arrow from the top of the castle into a fire pit as a celebratory gesture during birthday parties. An independent contractor, he specializes in agricultural buildings, including fumigation rooms for almonds and walnuts, and modest home additions and remodeling.

Instant gratification does not appear to be in Noz's world view. Although he did not set out to build a castle, dissatisfaction with his own blueprints for a home carried him back to the landscape of his youth in 's-Hertogenbosch, the fortified medieval city that was the home of the Renaissance painter Hieronymus Bosch. There, "the night views were all lit up with castles," Noz recalled. "Things look so much nicer with a castle."

It is one thing to have a castle built; it is another to build a castle. With the exception of taking eight months off, Noz has worked on his castle — designed from his childhood memory — every weekend since 1998, mixing his own mortar in a wheelbarrow, forging the iron bolts, latches and other hardware, making the oak doors and fir spiral staircases and laying the bricks, about 40,000 and counting, by hand (he occasionally uses a forklift). Including slate for the roofs that is imported from China and the odd gargoyle, Noz estimated he has spent $150,000 and 500 hours a year.

The grand plan is for Noz and his wife, Diane, a special-education aide, to retire here, though the castle is only half-completed, with four more towers to come. Its Rapunzel-like forms rise from a dried-up reservoir, about a 15-minute drive from the Nozes' home on a quiet street in Denair (population 3,400). Even there, the Noz touch is apparent in the basketball hoop attached to a miniature bell tower in the driveway — with a real bell.

Noz is thought to be the first person to file plans for a medieval castle with the Merced County building department. Lydia Clary, the county's supervising building inspector, said she was struck by Noz's attention to detail. "He actually vacuumed the footings, or holes for the concrete foundation, so there wouldn't be any loose dirt," she said.