This is pretty cool: a solid core interior door made out of straw. With other straw products on the market for some time now, I’m happy to see that some of the larger, more mainstream companies are picking up the ball. I hope they run with it and run the right way. The new doors were officially announced on Masonite’s website in February.
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I recently received an email from a woman looking for quality employment with an architectural firm that works in green design, especially straw bale. She sent me her resume and some sample projects and I was very impressed with both. She’s a recent graduate from the University of Texas at Austin with a masters in architecture. Prior to graduate school she worked at Daniel Smith and Associates (www.dsaarch.com) designing and building with straw bales.

If you’re interested in learning more about her, please comment here and I will get you in touch with her. Again, her work is very unique and beautiful, in my opinion.

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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The creation of your dream home starts long before you break ground. For most people, it starts in their imagination. Dreaming of the perfect house is fun and inspiring; however, all too often the end results are less fantastic than the initial dream. This is because the reality of construction costs and how they increase or decrease as a result of specific design elements are not often addressed in the dream stage. The video below discusses how creating an interesting design facade can actually increase the price of your house.
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I receive several emails a month from people who need help with the process of finding land, working with municipalities, and building their straw bale home. For many individuals, this is the first time they have ever ventured out into the World of Green Construction, and the implications of building green can affect the approach they take to finding land and working with the local authorities in order to create the dream home they desire. I have written blog entries in the past about evaluating your site, but may not have mentioned information about working with local planning departments.
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Today I received the following question and I thought it was worth sharing my response with you all. Here’s the question, my response follows:
“Well the time for using all this information is almost upon us. We are looking at a property at the moment to build on; however, it is quite a steep property. Do you have any ideas or photos of straw bale houses built on steep sites with out doing major earth work? Thanks in advance.
Regards Chris and Jenny”
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I often tell people the first step in building a straw bale house, or any house for that matter, does not actually take place during construction but rather in the design room. In truth, this is not quite accurate. For a really good design, the first steps must take place in the field during site evaluation.

Every site is different and therefore requires attention to different details. For example, does your building site have drainage concerns? Where does the sun travel during the day? How much organic material and fill will need to be removed from the site prior to construction? These and other questions like these need to be addressed early on in the design process in order to yield a home design that truly incorporates the house into the site. In the following video, I walk you through a sample site evaluation. This evaluation is obviously truncated for time, but gives you an idea of what is involved in performing a site evaluation. Take as much time as you can spare for the evaluation. You will be happy you did in the end.
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One drawback to straw bale construction is the thickness of the walls. That may not be something you hear me say very often, but in an urban setting, it truly is a liability. This is because most urban lots are small and do not have adequate space to hanlde the thick bale walls. The key to utilizing bale walls in an urban environment is smart design and clever construction. There is no reason why bale walls could not be used in most urban homes if th ehouse is designed well and utilizes th evertical lift of the lot in place of the horizontal sprawl. Building green means more than just bale walls as I have said before. It means using green appliances, glues, windows and more. It also means downsizing from the 3000 SF house to a smaller urban lot for many people. This well designed downsizing can then quickly become your asset and not simply a thick walled liability.

Greetings.

I have a farm in Trinidad, Colorado (although I live in Denver) and on it is an old house that I want to tear down. I would like to build a house that is so energy efficient that I can leave it with no heat in the winter and have no problems with freezing, etc. In other words, I want to create a cave-like environment where the temperature stays roughly the same as outdoors in any weather. Can a straw bale house achieve this goal? I have double pane, low e-glass windows in my farm house
now and would transfer them to the new house. Please let me know if this is possible with the straw bale construction.
Thank you.
Richard
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Richard,
The biggest aspect of this working is the design of the house. You will need to incorporate enough passive solar design to create a natural heat source for the home. Without any heat, the house will eventually equal the temperature outside, even if that is 0 degrees. If the house has passive solar design, it can generate its own heat by using the sun to warm interior floors and other heat sinks. That heat is then slowly released into the home and the4 bales insulate to such a high efficiency that they can contain that heat through the night. It is possible, and it will take some detailed planning and execution. Good luck.

Andrew

Do you live in a Tropical Rain Forest?

I am a big believer in the merits of straw bale construction. That’s probably obvious by now; however, there is one major drawback to working with bales: climate conditions. Bale homes are ideal for dry and mostly dry climates, acceptable in wet climates, and difficult to deal with in very wet and humid climates.

The big demon is not water, in the form of rain at least. In stead, it is humidity. Rain can be handled with proper design so even the wettest climates can accommodate straw bale structures. Humidity, on the other hand, cannot easily be designed out of a structure. It pervades everything and gets into everything. A bale house can stay dry from rain and still be saturated with moisture inside the plaster due to the acclimation of the bales to the area’s relative humidity. Everything eventually settles on a moisture content that is in direct relation to the relative humidity of its surroundings. Therefore, if the humidity is high, so too is the moisture content of your bread, your clothes, and your bales!

Let me give you an example, I used to live in Northern California, where humidity was often very high due to the coastal fog. My wife put her leather boots under our bed for a month and when she took them out, they were covered in green mold! Our house seemed fine and we surely did not expect to see that kind of mold anywhere near the inside of our house. But, the space under the bed is dark and has limited air movement, kind of like the space in between your layers of plaster.

What to do? Well, you must first consider if your climate is right for straw bale construction. If you have really high humidity and very little dry season each year, you may want to consider something other than bale construction. Another option is to consider mechanical help. If you install a whole house de-humidifier, you can minimize the amount of moisture in your house and therefore in your bales. Remember that when pressurized under normal living conditions, air moves out through the walls. If the air is dry, it is safe to pass through the walls. Systems like this can be installed into your HVAC system, if you have one, or can be stand alone units utilizing 4″ duct work.

Remember to design and build for the water and humidity. You not only need to design to keep water out, but also to allow it to escape should it get in (nature has a way of blowing even the greatest plans!) Plan for both, and you will be okay. Nevertheless, if you live some where that you think is too risky, ask for advice and then make whatever decision you feel is best around the use of bales in your home. And know that this is coming from some one who loves bale construction so I’m trying to talk you out of your dream!

One limitation of load bearing construction is how much open space you can have in a wall as compared to the overall square footage of that wall. That may be true, but it does not mean that the size and shape of the windows and doors you add to the structure can’t be inspiring and exciting.
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Wow. Time flies. It has been a week since I last posted and I sure don’t want to start making that the norm. Sorry to all you daily blog readers for the long gaps in between blogs. I have been really busy in the field and thus short on time at the computer. Anyway, let’s get to it!
We are currently building a house where the architect has called for base board trim to be used throughout. That is fairly standard delivery for most homes; however, is much more difficult in bale homes due to the undulations in the bale walls and the large curves in corners.
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When designing a house it can be difficult to imagine the space in three dimensions. Nonetheless, the more imaginative you can be with textures, shapes, and light, the more interesting the space will be on completion. In the example above, we used the sharp lines of the trusses to offset the gentle, soft curves of the bales.
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