Straw bale building made easy
Carolyn Roberts from house of
straw.com has made a fun and informative 8 minute video
that takes you through all the hoops she had to jump through to make
her straw bale dream a reality. What sets this collection of
information apart from others I've come across is the level of detail
she shares when it comes to building codes and materials.
We considered the straw bale approach briefly, but decided against it
for multiple reasons, mainly the fact that we get a lot of moisture
around here, and it's not really as cheap as you might think.
Carolyn spent 50 thousand dollars and a good chunk of her precious time
to finish the above home, which was way out of our price range and
would have delayed our garden infrastructure building considerably. Her
Walden castle is hands down more beautiful and efficient than our
recycled trailer, but we would have had to go in debt to attain that
level of comfort, an option that shouldn't even be on the table for
anyone who prefers time over money, which goes to the very core essence of what the Walden Effect is all about.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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We looked into straw bale for our project in NM...but decided to go with a Modified earth ship design. New Mexico does not allow load bearing straw bale, so the more common "infill" method is required.
In doing research for this I acquired some great books on straw bale construction and design...since we don't need them any more I've got them for sale..
http://boulder.craigslist.org/bks/1543497718.html
Thanks to Mark for the great post!
Moontreeranch --- Those books look good. I can't tell if Serious Strawbale is one of them --- that's the book I got the most out of when I was researching.
Everett --- I think that the finances for strawbale are different in different parts of the country. Maybe if you live in the grain belt where straw really is a waste product, it'd be cheaper. Around here, and I suspect where you live, they ship straw for hundreds of miles, so it's clearly not cheap.
Thanks for the links to the photos!