Strawbale Homes
Straw bale homes are constructed using baled straw from common farm grains such as wheat, oats, barley, rye or rice. Straw has traditionally been viewed as a waste product of farming and normally sold as animal bedding or for use by landscapers. It is important to draw a distinction between straw and hay. Straw is the dry plant material or stalk left in the field after a plant has matured and been harvested for seed; it is no longer alive. Hay bales are made from short species of livestock feed grass that is still green – and therefore unsuitable for the purposes of home construction. What follows is a discussion of some of the design characteristics and reasons why people look to build straw homes. With the rising costs of energy, energy efficient homes are becoming more and more desirable and it is probably energy efficiency which is the most commonly cited reason as to why people wish to build with straw bales. A well designed and built strawbale home can lower heating and cooling costs by as much as 75% when compare with a conventional home, although it is not as straightforward as simply stuffing straw into a wall. A proper design is needed for all aspects of the house to make sure it bears up to its full energy saving potential. The fact that straw bales are a natural product jigsaws in with their energy efficiency when looking at them as the chief constituent of a green home. Most leftover straw is simply burnt. Why not put it to better use and use it as a building material? Not only will it reduce the amount of particle pollution in the air, but by using a natural building material we eliminate the process of off gassing characteristic of home construction materials like formaldehyde and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) Straw bale homes are incredibly quiet. The thick walls eliminate most of the sounds of the outside world. As with energy efficiency aspect of straw bales, their ability to suppress noise will also be contingent upon a thoughtful design. The house’s design must be thoughtfully planned out to yield the correct balance of sound insulation, natural light and energy efficiency. It may seem counter intuitive but straw bale homes are extremely fire resistant. Indeed, a bale home has roughly three times the resistance to fire of a conventional home. A fire needs oxygen to burn and in a conventional home there is a lot of oxygen available. The dense nature of straw bale however ensures that there is no where enough oxygen for the fire to really take hold. When you consider how a stack of loose paper burns well, but that a phone book doesn’t, then you can appreciate the mechanics behind straw bales and their fire resistance. Any discussion of straw bales homes would not be complete by also making mention of the fact that they look great and are indeed quite easy to build. The difficult aspects of building with bales rest on the more conventional elements such as electrical and plumbing. The baling itself is something that can easily be learned with the right instructor. To that end, straw bale homes are popular with owner builders because they are fun to build and a good way to bringing friends and family together during the building process.
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