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Here’s an interesting question I received today about straw bale load bearing wall heights. I hope to hear more about this idea of multi-story load bearing structures in the future. Perhaps you have some input to share… Andrew, Although you said that you could not have a 2 storey LB building because of the wall […]
I just got an email from someone who plans to install his windows and doors the following way. I think it is an interesting approach to adding openings in load bearing construction and will provide for very good compression of the bales and a very quick construction of the walls. This is in line with […]
When building a load bearing straw bale wall, you need to support the wall from falling over into the house or out of the house. The direction in concern is called the out of plane direction and is perpendicular to the wall. A wall should be supported in a ratio of 13:1 (length to thickness […]
When making window and door bucks for your load bearing home or other structure, you have a few choices to make. What size wood do you want to use? What design should you employ? How will you attach the bucks to the wall? I find that knowing the answers to these questions BEFORE I start […]
OK, I have had a ton of load bearing questions coming in both in comments on this blog and in my email. So without further ado, I am going to answer the ones that keep popping up: Question: Why should I use load bearing construction instead of post and beam infill? Answer: It is a […]
Load bearing construction questions seem to follow me where ever I go. I’m writing this blog entry from a hotel in Oakland California. I’m here with my son’s ice hockey team and I thought I’d take a few minutes to respond to the many questions I’ve gotten about our upcoming Load Bearing Straw Bale video. […]
The strawbale.com team just came back from a much needed break. We took our kids skiing over the spring break vacation and had a blast. Dicken Weatherby, the web guy for strawbale.com, and I had a chance to chat about the advantages of load bearing straw bale construction. Dicken brought a small digital recorder with […]
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 […]
For many years I have expressed my bias about building a post and beam structure over a load bearing structure. Well, the time has come for me to back peddle a bit and sing some praises of load bearing construction. Having built a few load bearing structures in the last couple years, I have started […]
When running a one day bale raising workshop on a load bearing structure last weekend, we encountered the problem of complete walls with no box beam to compress them with. The owners had prepared for the workshop, but had not yet built the box beam for the top of the wall as requested. This meant […]