Building with bales: Using straw offers environmental savings and beauty,

[bananas]

There are some photos with the article.

http://nctimes.com/articles/2006/07/25/homes/18_01_367_20_06.txt

Building with bales: Using straw offers environmental savings and beauty, too

By: JOEL D. AMOS - For the North County Times

Straw houses? Images of the "Three Little Pigs" are no more. Straw bale housing has found a market in San Diego County, and one man who has had his finger on the pulse of this environmentally friendly building process is Bob Bolles of Poway.

He built a model straw bale house that was on display at the San Diego County Fair recently, and is clearly pleased with his workmanship, which even the big bad wolf could not blow down.

<snip>

For the last decade, Bolles has been building exclusively with straw bales. His business has produced more than 60 projects, from houses to the seed storage building for the Wild Animal Park and projects for KFMB's meteorologist Loren Nancarrow at his Carlsbad property.

<snip>

"It just makes so much sense because it's all renewable resources," Nancarrow said. "As the success and popularity of Al Gore's movie ("An Inconvenient Truth") has shown, we have got to start getting on top of this."

<snip>

Related links:

Sustainable Building Systems, http://strawbalehouse.com

California Straw Building Association, http://www.strawbuilding.org

[unpossibles]

1. cool! n/t

[msongs]

2. cool as in well insulated nt

[jpak]

3. and warm (and cheap too)

http://www.unity.edu/facultypages/womersley/intro.htm

[Uben]

4. Better re-think this one!

Our local marine biologist used hay for insulation in the walls of his new home. He claimed he was being environmentally concious and had read many articles about the practice. His new home burnt to the ground this spring! The hay is combustible, and was listed as the cause of the fire. The longer it sits, the more combustible it gets. I'll pass on this one!

[Arkansas Granny]

5. Apparently, when properly constructed and coated with plaster

the straw bale walls are quite fire resistant.

The ASTM E-119 fire resistance test for plastered straw-bale wall assemblies in 1993 passed for a 2 hour fire-wall assembly. In this test a gas flame blows on one side of the wall at approximately 2000 degree Fahrenheit (1100 degrees Celsius) while the temperature of the other side of the wall is continuously measured. The results of this test had no burn-through and a maximum temperature rise of 60 degrees Fahrenheit (33.3 degrees Celsius).

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Straw_Bale_Construction/Characteristics/Resistance_to_fire

[Javaman]

7. Exactly, if built correctly to specs, a hay bale house is just as

safe as any conventenial built home. It sounds to me that the contractor did the cheap on the mud.

[hatrack]

14. Sounds like he didn't let the hay cure

Hay can spontaneously combust when it's fresh - if you don't stack it with air spaces between the rows of bales, your barn will burn down.

[skids]

6. Another alternative is isochanvre/hempcrete

Pretty incredible stuff:

http://www.life.ca/nl/108/hemphouse.html

[Javaman]

8. Also look into Cobb and Rammed earth homes. nt

[Arkansas Granny]

9. I'm not familiar with the cobb home, but I read a pretty

comprehensive article in "Mother Earth News" back in the 80's about an older couple who had built their own rammed earth home. Sounded pretty labor intensive, but very economical to build, heat and cool.

[Javaman]

10. Cobb homes...

Sorry, I spelled it wrong, it's Cob. Basically, it's a mud hut. LOL but that is the low end of the spectrum regarding that type of construction.

Here's a few links.

http://www.greenhomebuilding.com/cob.htm

http://www.cpros.com/~sequoia/

[midnight armadillo]

11. Greenhomebuilding.com

That is an excellent reference for a wide variety of green and natural building techniques.

My opinion: the stick built house has run its course. Houses should be built from local and recycled materials (i.e. trash, of which there's a lot to choose from). We should NOT be building Colonials in New Mexico - they are not suited to the climate! For space-sensitive plots, like urban areas, SIPS offer much higher energy efficiency and quicker building than stick building. For areas that can tolerate thicker walls, strawbale, rammed tire, rammed earth, etc. are very appropriate.

One side effect is that regional architecture would make a comeback, and then (gasp!) different parts of the country would look different.

[Javaman]

12. You make a very good observation...

"One side effect is that regional architecture would make a comeback, and then (gasp!) different parts of the country would look different."

Extrapolating on that point, this is why I think bush* is pushing so hard for ethanol.
Because if different types of energy were used in different parts of the country that would lead to a decentralizing of the power grid aka less money for the energy corps.

As long as they keep trying to promote this homogenization of the U.S. they will be able to continue to control how everything gets done in this country down to the smallest detail.

As you have observed, the future is many different types of housing matched to the climate and region. And the same goes for power.

the giant ass electrical grid is only going to fail more and more frequently until it is decentralized.

[Dead_Parrot]

13. Tire homes sound interesting...

...and if the gas keeps going up, there should be a plentiful supply of half-used SUV tires as raw materials. :evilgrin:

(For those not in the know, tire houses are a form of rammed earth, using tires filled with compressed earth)