Thursday, October 4th, 2007 | Popularity: 27%
Others have mentioned this to me in the past and I quite honestly did not see the advantages with the same sense of excitement that I do today. I can imagine having a house framed in two days and ready for bales! Wow, that would be exciting. I failed to mention that the barn currently under construction is no small affair. It is about 3000 SF so the day and half progress is very impressive. My mother in law said she had a lot of opportunities to fine tune the design to her liking, but not so many that she became overwhelmed. That is a great balance. If you have any experience with steel kit buildings and have some advice for how bales could marry this technology, please let us know!
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My mother in Law is currently having a barn built for her horses. I have been very impressed with the speed in which the structure has gone up. Three to four men have been working on the site for a bout a day and a half and the entire frame is up and most of the 2×6 interior wall boards are laid. This has lead me to think about the use of metal “kit” buildings with straw bales as the wall insulation.
Others have mentioned this to me in the past and I quite honestly did not see the advantages with the same sense of excitement that I do today. I can imagine having a house framed in two days and ready for bales! Wow, that would be exciting. I failed to mention that the barn currently under construction is no small affair. It is about 3000 SF so the day and half progress is very impressive. My mother in law said she had a lot of opportunities to fine tune the design to her liking, but not so many that she became overwhelmed. That is a great balance. If you have any experience with steel kit buildings and have some advice for how bales could marry this technology, please let us know!
Popularity: 27%
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Andrew Morison is a licensed contractor specializing in straw bale and green construction. He has shown thousands of people how to build their own straw bale projects through his comprehensive series of instructional straw bale, concrete foundation, and plastering DVDs. You can check these out at http://www.LearnStrawBale.com.
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October 22nd, 2007 at 4:57 am
There is a company using steel framing with Straw Bales. This approach seems more environmently friendly since the steel can be recycled and may be from your fathers old chevy. Any way check them out here –> http://www.strawhouses.com/
Terry
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Hi
I’ve been considering this very thing but when I took my plan to a kit shed company they said they couldn’t help me because they can’t do custom designs for dwellings (only sheds) even though they have a dwelling range. This seemed crazy so I contacted the local distributor to look into it.
I’ll let you know how I get on, however, I’ve since found that you can buy all these lightweight steel components and brackets separately so it might be just a matter of specifying that to your architect or engineer.
Cheers
Monte
November 4th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
I’ve designed and built a double storey straw-bale dwelling in Kalbarri, Western Australia.
All material has been bought in bulk lengths, cut and welded on site. Me and a TA erected the whole steelwork, post and beam, in 12 days inclusive the finished roof.
The posts are designed with spacing to take 3 bales (2.7m). The roof is made out of 100mm sandwiched insulation panels called “Econodeck”, allowing a span of 5.6m.
All internal walls are standard Stud walls lined with plasterboards. The bales are cut around the 50×50x3mm Posts to allow a render cover of 25mm.
December 16th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Why not put the bales outside the steel frame and box around it on the inside? Could even be finished to resemble more expensive timber frame. Metal liner panels would make easier/faster interior finish for mechanical and or garage space with out affecting exterior appearance. As a pm for a heating and cooling contractor in Missouri I would not worry about metal attracting condensation as long as there was no thermal bridging from the cold side to the interior steel in the winter. This would not be as big an issue in the summer with the lower humidity inside due to air conditioning. It would be very important not to oversize your air conditioning unit as it will cool the space quickly and not remove enough of the humidity.