When the first of the Three Little Pigs built his home of straw, the Big Bad Wolf had good reason to laugh. But contemporary strawbale houses are nothing to laugh about: in a struggling economy and a world increasingly concerned with its energy usage, strawbale houses might represent the future of home construction for the eco-conscious.
What is a Strawbale House?
A strawbale house is a home whose walls are built with bales of straw and plastered over with a mud or clay finish. The clay is then coated with a natural plaster to seal the clay protect the walls from moisture and sun. Door frames, window frames, and roofs are often built with two-by-fours, and the most roofs are metal, because these tend to be the best choice for keeping rain and moisture away from the moisture-vulnerable walls.
Cheap to build, and much more energy efficient than most contemporary construction, the attractive finished look of a strawbale home is similar to a stucco or an adobe home. While majority of new strawbale houses are being built in the desert southwest, strawbale houses can be built in any climate, from Canada to Florida.
Advantages to Strawbale Houses
There are several advantages to constructing a home with strawbales, including the cost, the use of environmentally sustainable materials, the energy efficiency, and the versatility.
Regarding cost, a 1,200 square foot strawbale home should cost only between $50 and $60,000 to complete from start to finish (Source: A House of Straw). Compare this to the $175,000 price tag for the typical new home in America. Detractors might argue that a 1,200 square foot home is considerably smaller than average American homes, but on the other hand, perhaps the downsizing that strawbale homes force is another advantage. Considering the average size of the American single-family home has grown from just under 1,000 square feet in 1950 to nearly 2,500 square feet in 2004, and considering that the deepest carbon footprint in the world is still America's, in large part due to big, energy-inefficient homes, is all this extra space worth the financial and environmental cost?
Compared to standard home construction, which voraciously gobbles up lumber at an alarming rate, strawbale homes are much more environmentally sustainable. Straw bales can be bought nearly anywhere, and do not strain natural resources. The bales and the plasters that cover them are natural, non-toxic, and their thickness keeps out noise while holding the indoor temperature steady. In fact, strawbale houses are so well-insulated that a 75% drop in heating and cooling costs is not unusual at all (Source: El Paso Solar Energy Association).
Strawbale homes can be built virtually anywhere. It should be noted that the walls must be kept as dry as possible; in humid, rainy areas such as the northwestern and southeastern US, careful research and planning should go into the strawbale home before building to make sure that moisture is kept away from the walls as much as possible. If moisture seeps into the strawbale walls, the interior straw will gradually rot and disintegrate, leaving only an empty shell that cannot support the weight of a roof.
Anyone can build a strawbale house. With a little help from a contractor to navigate the owner through building codes, an experienced strawbale builder who can design the home and offer advice, and a few able-bodied friends, a family can erect a strawbale home in only a few weeks' time.
K. N. Singer - There are some pros and some cons to being a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. The pros are that I can and do write about anything ...
