Straw Bale House!

[Terrel L. Shields]

you have to worry about a goat eating your house

I think I'm more worried about Lee's 3rd pig hiring Rambo to guard the place...

 

[Farmland]

And you have to worry about a goat eating your house.

Didn't your teacher tell you, hay is for horses.......or was that houses?

 

[redfish]

This type of construction provides more than a "slight increase in R value".

 

[Sarge]

No huffing and puffing during the inspection?

:laugh:

Genius!!!!:laugh:

 

[Mike Garrett RAA]

I did one about 25 years ago...had no straw bail comps so compared it to conventional construction homes and made an energy efficient adjustment. They bought it. It's still there and has been sold a couple of times since my original appraisal.

 

[DMZwerg]

And you have to worry about a goat eating your house.

I do not know too many goats that like the taste of paint, plaster and/or whitewash.

Many here may not be aware of it but using materials like straw, sticks and even horse hair goes back to even before medieval times (maybe 6000 years or so for wattle & daub). Use of sticks is generally wattle & daub and plasterwork in castles and houses hundreds of years old (in Europe) owe the duration in no small part to the horse hair and/or straw mixed in with the plaster. Before straw made a comeback the newest form of wattle & daub was plaster & lath board, the change due in no small part to modern sawmills (aka, ease and cheapness of thin lath boards).
Said materials work quite well if no moisture gets in. If not well sealed the plant material can rot and the wall become so fragile a human could push their way through.

In other words, if done well don't knock it. We use plasterboard today because it is cheaper and easier, not because it is necessarily "better".

 

[Mile High Trout]

Interesting subject. Never ran across one.

Google: Straw Bale

Brings about a lot of very interesting hits.

Check out this pic of a full sizer under construction:

http://www.coloradostrawbale.org/Members.html

Looks like the TinyHouse people are already all over this one.

http://tinyhouseblog.com/straw-bale/straw-bale-101/

 

[Jill Kinnaird]

Way cool!!! Do termites eat straw? On occasion I've had the pleasure to view 'full brick' circa ~1860 properties here and they're beautiful!

 

[Dee Dee]

Interesting subject. Never ran across one.

About 16 or 17 years ago I did a lot of research and was very seriously considering building a straw bale house on my property up in Conifer. I changed my mind after talking to a few of the guys at the Jefferson County building department, who thought the whole thing was some kind of joke, claiming that nobody had ever built one in JeffCo before (at least that they knew of) and, of course, didn't seem very open-minded about getting an education about anything other than what they were already familiar with...sticks and bricks.

We all must assimilate, you know. :dry: