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Health & Fitness

Local Voices: Who's Afraid of The Big Bad Wolf? Not Me!

Building with straw has saved us a bundle in heating and cooling costs.

Who’s Afraid of The Big Bad Wolf? Not Me!

Like the first little pig, I chose to build my home with straw, but unlike that hasty fellow, I built mine with bales of straw.  Sure, I hear lots of big, bad wolf jokes, but really, it’s me that’s getting the last laugh.  

When this week’s temperatures soared into the high nineties my super insulated home, with it’s two feet thick walls, stayed nice and cool at 68 degrees.  In fact, most of the year it stays within five degrees of just that without heating or cooling.

The hottest the house has ever gotten was 80 degrees after the super heat wave in 2006 when it was over 100 degrees for almost 10 days in a row.  Once the fog finally came back in it cooled off immediately.

How do you build a house with straw you might ask?  First you support the roof with a post and beam frame without any 2X4s for additional support.  In between the corner posts that support the roof you infill with bales of straw.  Then you tie the bales together using heavy duty baling twine.  These aren’t any old bales. These are construction grade bales of rice straw from the Central Valley.

But what about mice?  Because it’s straw, not hay (hay is for horses, straw is for houses) and the grain has been removed (straw is just the stem of the plant minus the grain) there isn’t much of interest for rodents.  And because it’s rice straw, it is high in silica, so it’s a bit like chewing on glass for a mouse.

What about fire?  After the bales are arranged and tied together they are covered with plaster and stucco.  We had ours shot into the bale and in some places it sunk in seven inches.  With the tightness of the bind, then the stucco coating, the bales are able to withstand temperatures of up to 2,000 degrees without igniting.  It’s about a lack of oxygen. They will char, but not burn.

Water must really mess it up! How can you avoid that?  A friend of mine, who built Concord’s first straw home, said, “If you give her a nice bonnet and a fine pair of boots, you’ll keep her dry and happy.”  He was referring of course to a solid foundation and an overhanging roof that shelters the walls from direct rain fall.  We built a wrap around porch with that purpose in mind, but also to go along with the “Victorian influenced farm house” I had in all my dream home sketches.

Does it really eliminate heating and cooling costs?  Well, almost.  It’s interesting how 63 degrees can seem cool in the summer and cold in the winter.  We do have a heater to get us back up to 68, but we use less than a quarter of the propane that our neighbors with a similar sized house use, even though we have four times as many people here.  If I could just get used to 63 we’d have virtually no heating bill at all.  

Why on earth would you build with straw over the tried and true wood?  Believe me, my contractor asked me that every day.  Besides the obvious insulation factor which is said to be two to three times greater than conventional R19 stick framed walls which regulates the house temperature nicely all year, there is the fact that this house used just 30% of the wood of a similar all wood construction home.  Straw grows every year, wood to make 2X4s takes 20+ years to grow. Farmers in the Central Valley used to have to burn the straw to make way for the next year’s crop. This practice began to be phased out in 1991, and is allowed only on a conditional basis now. Although burning is the fastest and most efficient method of eliminating the straw because it does not compost readily, the laws were enacted to protect air quality. The burning of rice straw in our state used to account for more air pollution than all of the cars on our roads.  Now, however, farmers have the opportunity to market a second cash crop after they have harvested their grain.  There are efforts to use straw for paper, siding, in addition to construction.

When we built our home in 2003 we were the first strawbale house in Lafayette, the third in the county and around the 20th in the state. It was fairly new to the area, but not in the country.  Straw has been used for construction in Nebraska (where trees were scarce) for over 200 years where straw homes still stand on the prairies.  In Nebraska, where earthquakes are rare, the post and beam frame is unnecessary, so the roof sat directly on the bales.

But where does this leave those of you with 50s ranch homes?  When considering your next home improvement, rethink your insulation. More is better.  When thinking about building a mountain retreat, consider straw as an alternative to logs. 

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