I recently had a chance to catch up with Kelly Lerner, a Green Building Architect who won the United Nation’s “World Habitat Award” in 2005, to chat about her work on the Chinese Straw-Bale Energy Efficient Housing Project and her upcoming book on Green Building. To listen to this podcast on your computer please click […]
Archive | Helping Each Other/Personal Stories
Selling a Straw Bale House
As a licensed contractor, I have the opportunity to build houses for people who want straw bale construction. I also have the dubious task of trying to share with clients who do not know about straw bale construction why they should go that direction. The latter is very difficult and, in fact, a bit frustrating […]
Save the Rain Foundation
By Andrew Morrison on Fri, October 20, 2006 in Green Building/Living, Helping Each Other/Personal Stories
Many of you will have already received the email telling you about the Save the Rain Foundation and our efforts to support their work. For those of you who have not heard from us on this, I hope you find the information inspiring. A few weeks ago I was at the West Coast Green Expo […]
Home Insurance Companies to Insure Your Straw Bale Building
By Andrew Morrison on Thu, September 21, 2006 in Financing/Insurance, Green Building/Living, Helping Each Other/Personal Stories
Finding a home insurance company willing to insure your straw bale home may be difficult or may indeed be impossible. This is not because they are not worthy of insurance but because many insurance underwriters are operating from a place of fear and ignorance. Many underwriters I have heard from have said they could not […]
Ecoversity in Santa Fe, New Mexico
By Andrew Morrison on Sun, July 30, 2006 in Green Building/Living, Helping Each Other/Personal Stories, Workshops/Trainings
Ecoversity in Santa Fe, New Mexico is a hands on learning center that focuses on all things sustainable from natural building to conscious sociology. This summer they are offering a series of free classes and workshops to introduce people to their campus and classes. Included in this is a class on straw bale construction. Alfred […]
Environmentally Sustainable Construction: An Introduction for Kids
Antony Brown, the Director of the Ecosa Institute in Prescott, Arizona recently held a free workshop in order to introduce kids to environmentally sustainable construction. The workshop was aimed at high school kids with an interest in architecture. Far too often, kids decide they want to explore the world of architecture and then find out […]
The First Two Owners Have Officially Moved in to The Straw Bale Village
As of this past Friday, July 14th, the first two owners have officially taken possession of their homes in the Straw Bale Village. It has been a long process from land acquisition, project design, civil engineering, City process, infrastructure construction, home design, City architectural review, structural home engineering, City building department review, home construction and […]
RSS Feeds
You may have been seeing these little orange RSS or XML buttons around the Internet. Or this little graphic: If you were wondering what they are…It’s “the next big thing” — you can use it to get newsfeeds from CNN or ESPN, as well as just about anything else, including news on upcoming movies, DVD […]
Straw Bale Houses for Seasonal Workers in Virginia
I made contact with an architect in Virginia today about a project he designed for seasonal workers. In Leedstown, Virginia a farmers advocacy group is building four straw bale houses for seasonal workers. It is a cooperative effort between a number of organizations and farmers. The homes will be dedicated to seasonal workers and their […]
Sugar Cane Bales in South Africa
A gentleman from the South African Sugar Research Institute contacted me today to discuss the potential of using sugar cane bio-mass in bales as a building material. He is very interested in the potential of sugar cane to provide affordable building materials for the thousands of men, women and children who cannot afford housing of […]