How Straw Bale Building Will Go Mainstream
Building houses out of straw is as old as, well, as old as the medieval nursery story about the Three Little Pigs, and their houses; one of Bricks, one of Straw and something… it’s been a while.
Straw building has a long long history. It is a great natural insulator. But it’s not so easy for the average builder to access straw, these days.
You’ll not find straw insulation at your local hardware store.
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Here’s a great solution for that. The US company Strawjet has designed machinery like the machine that makes Christmas trees easy to transport from the Christmas tree lot. Now we can simply wrap up our own straw bales so they can be handled as easily as sheets of plywood and sheet rock.
Any kind of waste grain stalks such as wheat and rice straw work well. You can also use tobacco stalks, hemp, sunflower, and Jerusalem artichoke, bamboo, palm fronds, river reeds, and wild grasses.
You can use anything for the binding cable; photo-degradable nylon or natural strings such as hemp, jute, or cotton. You can use the bales single file within prefab metal as here, or you can use it traditional style in larger packs.
The three major benefits of the system:
1. By reusing waste you avoid the carbon emissions of burning it.
2. This replaces materials that take more energy to manufacture.
3. No glues and resins need to be added. The material is environmentally pure.
4. The resulting building saves energy long-term because straw is a great insulator.
It’s a flexible system. The machine can turn out the straw bales in different formations, to simply fill in single-file between lightweight metal studs for climates that don’t need that much insulation or in various thicker multiple packed bundles. Curved walls are also possible, according to the company.
Oh, and the three pigs story? I think of it as an ancient “best practices” warning about fire safety; a kind of primeval building code enshrined in fable.
Straw bale construction should be used as insulation under adobe, as in the American Southwest. Then straw compares favorably with wood for fire safety.
Images from Strawjet
Via Inhabitat
Rawsome News!
My 13 yr young homelearner and I have already creatively visualized our dream home: straw bale supreme!
Now to have the perfect plot of land, the finances, and the know how …
Thanks for inspiring us!
K
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This is ridiculous. I certainly wouldn’t want to live in one. How would a fire for it be?
Is the metal necessary ? Straw has been used in bales [like sqaure blocks] which can be cut to any shape for windows and doors - the bales are held in place with stick and twine and then covered with lime plaster - makes amzingly beautiful houses…
So these straw bales are more like gigantic cigars really. 2″ diameter ? Are you joking ? How long are they, and how much do they weigh and how much does one cost to buy ? Here in Bulgaria “Kirpitch” - clay and straw - I find to be a very good material, and strong garden walls are about a 30cm thick.
Circular section isn’t at all stable - whichever way you stack it. Nope, I don’t get it, which is a pity because straw and mud - as I say - CAN work very well. Any ideas ?
Steel framing is actually very smart in the USA…
If you built a modified Larsen truss house here in the US with steel framing on an ICF foundation, you could put the straw into both the inner and outer wall and a layer of straw between the two walls.
Steel is one of the most recycled building materials, and I’d rather have US steel stay here in the US instead of being sent to China, the Chinese do intend on becoming the next super power and it takes a lot of steel to produce a navy fit for a super power…
Yes, it’s allways good to make your house “re-cyclable”, I guess ? But as I said just above, Straw and mud mixed and dried into blocks has worked for centuries, so what’s all the excitment about making a building out of paperless fags held together with plastic ? Who wpuld want to insure it ? Not me, that’s for sure !