Did you know you can build a house out of straw? Yeah, I didn’t either until someone at work decided to build one. But apparently it’s an age old building technique which is surprisingly relevant today. Some benefits of building using strawbale, including:
- Cost of materials – a 2000 sq. ft home requires about 300 ‘3 wire’ bales of straw, and cost only about $1000.
- Strawbale is a renewable resource, and helps lessen our reliance on wood.
- Strawbale houses are extremely well insulated, and are highly efficient
According to the Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Program website,
Properly constructed and maintained, the straw-bale walls, stucco exterior and plaster interior remain water proof, fire resistant, and pest free. Because only limited skill is required, a community house-raising effort can build most of a straw-bale house in a single day. This effort yields a low-cost, elegant, and energy-efficient living space for the owners, a graceful addition to the community, and a desirable boost to local farm income.
There are a variety of ways to build these houses, including adding strawbale in addition to a wood frame, or using the strawbale as load bearing walls – you just use rebar or something like that to hold the bales in place.
If you’d like to learn more about this, I’d recommend checking out the DOE’s great site, which has some background, some fascinating case studies, as well as information about other energy saving building techniques.
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