Think of it: a beautiful home with no mortgage; a house that's environmentally-responsible; a house with almost no heating and cooling costs due to fantastic insulation; and an opportunity to laugh and drink with friends.
It's all possible. And that's the message that straw bale homeowners and enthusiasts have been trying to spread for years. It seems that finally the current mortgage crisis, America's stagnant wages, and the new global green consciousness are combining to create a perfect storm which is leading people back to owner-built straw bale homes.
And let's face it, straw bale homes are beautiful. Don't believe me? A quick search on Flickr will show you how great they can look.
A common misconception about straw bale homes is that they're entirely straw, and the bales are entirely exposed to the elements--leaving them to mold and decay. But that's not so. Straw bale homes have foundations, roofs, and full frames (with some modifications for the bales) just like any other house. But instead of expensive and often toxic building materials (glued plywood, fiberglass insulation, heinous plastic siding, paints, etc.) the exterior walls are stacked piles of finished straw bales. The bales are covered in a natural finish that, when completed, resembles stone or brick material and seals off the straw from the weather--protecting it for hundreds of years.
Michel Bergeron and Paul Lacinski, authors of Serious Straw Bale: A Home Construction Guide for All Climates, have been designing and building straw bale homes for years. In their book, they offer the following additional benefits to living in a straw bale home:
Beauty
The most compelling among many reasons to build with bales is the quiet beauty of bale walls. Unlike walls of panelized materials, which require layers of ornamentation to bring life to their unnaturally uniform surfaces, bale walls look and feel as if they were made by hand.
Insulation Value
Straw bale houses may look and feel like plastered stone or earth houses, but they are in a different thermal category, entirely. Old stone houses are cold. New stone houses are typically built with foam insulation, either sandwiched between two independent stone walls, or blown onto the inside face of the stone. Both of these methods are quite expensive. Plastered bales, on the other hand, provide a highly insulative wall at a price that is competitive with quality conventional construction.
Nontoxic
Bales are a natural material. Unlike many manufactured building products, they contain no toxic ingredients, and are chemically stable. They will release no unhealthy chemicals into your home, and will not emit poisonous fumes in case of a fire. A relatively small amount of fossil fuel energy is consumed in the production of straw bales, and no toxins are released during the production or installation processes. Straw can eventually be composted back into the soil.
Use of Resources
A great deal of straw is grown around the world every year, enough for millions of houses. Some percentage of this straw should be going back into the soil, ideally mixed with animal manure, which provides the nitrogen necessary for its decomposition. Much of this straw is now burned in the field. By incorporating straw into buildings, we reduce particulate pollution and lock up carbon in a solid state, rather than releasing it as carbon dioxide, the most important greenhouse gas.
Economical
"Plastered stone for the person of reasonable means." Have you priced out a stone building lately? Or calculated the time to build one yourself? Most traditional earth and stone building systems have become quite expensive nowadays, because human labor has become expensive, compared with efficient assembly of machine-produced building components. Bale houses are substantially less expensive than real adobes, and look and perform a whole lot better than stick frames masquerading as earth.
Owner-Builder Friendly
Bales will remain a choice material of ownerbuilders, however, because they are so well suited to a "gang of friends" method of construction. Novices are also attracted to the apparent simplicity of the wall system. Even people who have no experience with construction can wrap their minds around the idea of stacking bales. On many occasions, this initial sense that "I can do this!" leads an otherwise intimidated non-builder out of his or her shell, toward a willingness to take on framing, plaster, finish work, and so forth.
Fun
Bale construction is fun because its two main components--stacking bales and smearing plaster--lend themselves to work parties. With a good design, careful organization, and the guidance of a few skilled people, it is possible to keep dozens of volunteers engaged in various stages of bale and plaster work. Because the process can be broken down into many distinct tasks, people are free to try different jobs and learn various skills. There are niches to be filled by persons of all levels of physical ability and experience. The synergy of this group effort (not to mention the sheer volume of work possible in a day) is one of the greatest thrills of straw bale construction.
If you're in the market for a home, and don't want to take on a mortgage (or much of one anyway), consider reading up on construction methods, gathering some friends, and building yourself a straw bale house.
J.S. McDougall is the head blogger at Chelsea Green -- a news site and book publisher covering the politics and practice of sustainability.
Follow J.S. McDougall on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jsmcdougall
The first was outgassing. There is a lot of V.O.C.s in old tires. In close quarters they volatilize. This is not good for people. True, they can be sealed. But that costs a fair bit of money, and if there are even a few cracks you're left with the V.O.C.s again.
The second is settling. The units aren't tied together. Many of them reject bourgeois notions like foundations and ties. Besides, tires filled with rammed earth are hard to tie effectively to a foundation. When settling occurs it can be devastating and very difficult to repair.
The third is seismic stability. Unreinforced masonry is bad enough. Unreinforced slippery, bendy tires are pretty much guaranteed to collapse in a significant quake.
I've saved the best for last. Fire. Tires burn. And when they burn they are hard to put out. The smoke is thick, opaque and hideously toxic. The heated tires melt and stick to fragile things like people and pets. Steel belted tires (all tires these days) have caught fire when the oxidizing steel creates enough heat to start a tire smoldering.
Earthships were an attractive idea. Give me a nice gunnite or AAC house instead.
My friend used rice straw and that stuff is wonderful, very fine strands compared to wheat. There is settling after construction, so patch jobs to the cracked plaster are part of living in a straw house. All in all I recommend it!
I've been thinking about a strawbale house.
Once land prices get down to sensible levels here in Los Angeles, I could very well envisage building a strawbale.
Not only do they have a good fire retardant properties, they also deal well with temblors, due to their flexibility.
i seem to recall one little piggie with a straw house getting blown-out by some big bad wolf. or was it just a dream? it was a long, long time ago...
A comical note: back then, not so durable!!!! When my cousins abandoned the house and moved elsewhere, one of the kids came back years later to look, and found that cows had EATEN their fomer house!!"
the settlers in mostly treeless western nebraska had to invent a new way of building homes. the "nebraska style" strawbale buildings have no support in the walls other than the bales themselves. the roof rested directly upon the compressed bales. several of these have been standing for over a century.
and you are confusing straw with animal feed. cows would not eat the straw. straw has no food value. it is used for animal bedding mostly, not for food. that is how it can survive for a hundred years without decomposing.
i have been looking into building a strawbale home for several years. there are several online resources you might look at. the best one is surfingstrawale. it has some good info.
"Those first buildings were not meant to be permanent. Many weren't. One of the oldest recorded straw bale buildings was a one-room schoolhouse built in 1896 or 1897. Cows ate the school in 1902 because the walls weren't plastered...."
From:
http://home.howstuffworks.com/straw-bale-house.htm
Anyone have info on straw bales homes in the Pacific Northwest? I think the Univ or Oregon has a test house with moisture sensors in the bales, but I haven't heard any followup info on it.
I hope you don't mind but I'm going to blog that idea over at Obama's website (lots of young people reading those blogs...)
BTW, I used to live in Portland and Eugene....
Straw bale houses are incredibly space inefficient . Consider a house with 6" walls. The walls take up ~40sq. ft. With 24" three string straw bales you lose ~160 or roughly an extra 10x12 bedroom.
There are hidden costs. Straw bale and cobb require huge amounts of labor . With the "gang of friends" you are getting a heck of a lot of man-hours for a few pizzas and cases of beer instead of paying a construction laborer $18/hour. If you paid real money or got a contractor to throw in the labor essentially the equation would change dramatically. "It's fun for the whole family so it doesn't cost anything" is a dishonest way of hiding the fact that labor has value. All sorts of construction can be tedious and can be fun.
There is straw which is burned and which could go to other uses. It sn't fertilizing the soil if it's sitting inside a wall.
The comparison to stone is simply dishonest. In North America almost nobody builds stone houses . Even then it's usually facing on a conventional frame. Compared to many other coventional and non-conventional methods straw bale has a place. It's not nearly as prominent as the author would like us to believe.
http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/sawdustoilet.html
The children had the job of gathering dried cow flops during the summer and these were burned during the winter to provide heat. (I think I remember reading that the Lapps do the same, i.e. burn reindeer dung to provide heat.)
With these new designs the houses are undoubtedly durable.
A comical note: back then, not so durable!!!! When my cousins abandoned the house and moved elsewhere, one of the kids came back years later to look, and found that cows had EATEN their fomer house!!
Yes , I believe it would be a nice way of getting around this pollution destruction of our planet , but do not call it morage free because by the time you would do this it would cost you an arm and leg for it the same as anything else.
Monopolies have been give control over this country and it's citizens and any more no matter what you try they are going to beat you to death with it.
My property taxes have now reached the cost ; to buy my home ; pay the morage / the interest / the insurance //and the property taxes.