Sometimes even the best planning can result in a mistake. For example, I recently heard from someone who purchased a house and found that there is no dryer vent through the straw bale wall to the exterior of the home.

Here’s a quick step by step guide to installing a vent after the fact. Be sure that you do this job with the power turned off to the house. I suggest you turn off all of the power, so there’s no risk of hitting a live wire buried in the bales.

It’s best to cut a larger hole than what you need as trying to cut a perfect size hole in a bale wall can be difficult. By all means, try it if you want as you can always enlarge your first attempt and continue with the method below. Much will depend on what size vent (or other protrusion you’re working with) you are trying to install. It will also depend on the density of your bales.

For the larger box method, start by using a rotary hammer drill with a chisel bit to remove the plaster. I suggest you score the outline of the area heavily with a scoring tool so that the plaster doesn’t continue to break in all directions as you go.

Cut out any mesh in the wall. Be sure to leave enough mesh when you cut it out to later anchor the framing that will go in the hole. You’ll need to bend it out of the way for now.

Use a chainsaw to plunge cut the straw out of the hole. Again, watch for wiring here!!!

Insert a small wood frame into the new hole and anchor it to the wall by attaching the bent back mesh to it.

Insert the dryer vent exterior wall fitting.

Insulate around the piping.

Trim out the new box with a wood detail, tile around the vent pie as necessary to hide the repair, or replaster the area with a skim coat over the entire wall to hide the repair.

Connect the dryer vent to the stub out.

Get going on the laundry that’s been piling up!

Many subcontractors start out confused and cautious when first introduced to alternative construction, but once they get a handle on the process of building an alternative house, most end up happy they decided to join the new process. After all, consider how boring it must be to do the same thing over and over again, day after day. You may even have experience with this yourself in your own job. Most of us like to try new things.
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Here’s another excerpt from the Be Your Own Contractor Training course. Hope you like it.

After all your hard work of looking for the right subcontractor you may suddenly find yourself in the awkward position of dealing with a subcontractor who simply is not dependable. This is certainly an uncomfortable position to be in, yet you’ll need to find a solution to the problem and quickly. Anytime you spend wishing the problem away will be time lost and added expense on your job.
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This is one of the coolest and most beautiful straw bale construction concepts I have seen in a long time. Although not something for the owner builder per se, this technique makes the potential for commercial straw bale construction a reality and can even be used in residential applications if the site location and project scale are right.
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When building curved walls, some of the most difficult aspects to deal with aer those that don’t naturally curve. For example, large windows in a curved wall will create an area where the window either sits inside the plane of the wall or outside that plane. There is no way to bend the window, other than buying expensive curved windows, so you have to get creative in how you finish the window installation. You might add an over sized sill to handle the difference, or hang the whole thing out side the plane of the wall with a creative faux finish. It’s up to you.
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Here’s a great article about the effectiveness of straw bale walls in earthquakes. This study shows how strong they really are by subjecting the 14′x14′ straw bale house to 200 percent more shaking than was seen in the Northridge, CA earthquake of 1994 which holds the largest measured ground acceleration in the world. You can view the article here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090403104229.htm or read it below.
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I received the following email a few days ago. It is a really sad story about how insurance companies can take us all for a ride, straw bale or no straw bale. The owners of the nearly complete straw bale home need an attorney’s help to battle their insurance company who is refusing to pay out for damages after a non straw bale related fire destroyed their home. There are important lessons to be learned in this sad story. Please read on and if you are an attorney who wants to help, please let us know by commenting on this post. I will put you in touch with the owners. Thanks in advance
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What is the perfect bale to use in a straw bale house? I am asked this question a lot. Most times, the question refers to what type of straw is the best. Some people say rice, others say wheat. I always tell people to buy what is most local as long as it is dense, dry, and clean. The other side of this question is in relation to the size of the bales to be used. Many people want to know if a 2 string bale is better than a 3 string bale for home construction.
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There are so many options for anchor bolts these days that it is hard to know what to use. I believe I have found the best option for most straw bale projects. Keep in mind that with both interior and exterior toe ups, there are a LOT of anchor bolts in a bale house. Because of this, expense has to be considered; however, it should not be the main factor.
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Concrete stakes are essential to just about any foundation project. In fact, they are used on almost all concrete projects that a home owner is likely to encounter. If you recognize the stakes in the image above, then you must have used them before. If you don’t know what they are, allow me to explain. Concrete stakes are used to hold the concrete form boards in place prior to and during a concrete pour. They stay in place until the concrete has hardened enough to remove the forms. At about $5 each, they are not cheap, and an average home foundation can easily use 200 or more of them. Making sure that you are able to get each one out after the pour is well worth the effort, but does not always happen.
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The biggest concern with building a straw bale house is protecting it from the elements. Water damage is the worst enemy of bale construction and as such, is protected against with the up most attention. There are several ways to deal with water issues in a straw bale home. Rain splash, direct rain contact, humidity, leaky wall openings, and water line breaks are all potential sources of water damage. Each can be handled, to an extent, with proper planning and construction.
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Ever wonder how to get plywood to the roof when you are working by yourself? How about making sure your concrete stakes don’t become a permanent member of your concrete foundation? There are always little tricks of the trade that make the job easier. Many of them are made up on site out of necessity and others are passed down from builder to builder. Here’s a couple that I’ll pass down to you.
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(image from www.huffingtonpost.com)
When preparing to build a house, money is always a concern. How much will it cost? Where should you focus the money you have? These are basic questions which are always on the page for people as they prepare to build. Make no mistake about it, building a house will be the most expensive thing you ever do. For most people, it is the most in debt they will ever be and so allocating the funds wisely is very important. The energy involved in having so much money tied up in one investment is the root cause for many people’s anxiety and stress when building. Making a few simple decisions up front could be the difference in how much that stress affects you.
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Many people have mentioned an interest in building a straw bale greenhouse. I have seen several different approaches to this idea over the years. I have two different column in which these projects have fallen. Some of the greenhouses have been absolute disasters, while others have proven to be beautiful and successful. Just how to move forward and how the design is realized will affect the column into which your project lands.
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It must be something in the air. I have received a bunch of emails about building landscape walls in the last week. This after a long drought of such questions. So, I guess it is time to talk about them again. The majority of the questions I have been getting are around the foundation system and the restrictions of building a landscape wall with bales.
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I received an email from someone interested in talking with me about contracting a project in Oakland, Oregon. As I told the author, I am not contracting these days as I am focusing entirely on teaching through my workshops, websites and consulting work. As a result, I have posted the request here for qualified contractors to respond to. Please let me know, via a comment to this blog, if you are interested in the project. I will connect you with the home owners. A project description is below.
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Back in October, I was asked to give some input and support to people who want to build their own house. The main question is “how to get started.” There is a lot to consider and a lot more to actually do, so often the jumping in point becomes the freeze point. In other words, right when you should jump, you freeze and question whether or not you are crazy to even consider building your own place. This may not be a bad question to ponder. Let’s start there.
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Windows are one of the most risk prone and failure prone areas of a house, conventional or straw bale. In fact, any penetration in the exterior wall is at risk of water infiltration and thus failure. Most contractors are aware of the risks associated with this area of construction yet they do not fully understand how to minimize that risk.
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Okay so it’s not poop, but it could be from a distance! These are piles of extra concrete. It is so important to calculate materials well and it could be the straw that breaks your back. (I meant that pun by the way.) In this case, the truck load was too short for what the concrete guys had planned so they had to thin the slab thickness which ultimately left a lot of excess concrete. To be sure, I mentioned it to the concrete company owner. It was a mistake, and not a huge deal because the slab in this case was so small; however, on a big job, the little extras can run wild quickly.
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Vapor barriers often create more damage than they prevent in straw bale houses. Why then are they required in straw bale building codes? The answer is not complicated; however, the impact of vapor barriers on homes of all types is.
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