A strawbale house primer...

Or, 'How NOT to build a strawbale house' by Randall Gerard. ;-)

Actually, my house turned out fairly well, but there are some things I would change if I did it again. Some of you have expressed curiosity about 'bale building, so here goes. The basics are pretty straight forward. Like any other house, a strawbale building needs a good foundation. Some builders have pounded dirt in old tires, laid bales on rail-road ties which are in turn laid on top of a trench filled with rock, and others have used poured concrete or concrete block. If you use a conventional approach to foundations, be sure to center the bales over the narrower concrete walls of the foundation. Bales are very heavy once they are stuccoed or otherwise finished, don't skimp on foundation. In general, it is simpler to build a foundation the width of the bales you are using then it is to tweak a conventional foundation so that the bales are adequately supported. Believe me, I know. My house has essentially two foundations. Initially we were going to stack bales on a wooden floor suspended between 6" round poles placed 10' apart. In other words, a pole building foundation. But the poles were too far apart, and we had to go back and pour a concrete stem-wall between the posts, AFTER the bales were stacked. I don't recommend it.

And that leads me to some design considerations. In general, it's much simpler and easier to build a single story structure then multiple stories. The higher you go with bales, the more unstable they get, and you have to compensate with more wood framing. Some have successfully built with NO framing at all between the bales. This only seems to work well on small single-story projects with solid slab foundations and hip roofs. If the bales are required to support the roof, a hip roof will distribute that load evenly to the tops of all four walls. That way the house should settle evenly. This style of bale building is called 'Nebraska style' after the western Nebraska pioneers who invented bale construction in the 1870's. There are still Nebraska style buildings standing in that state that date back to the 1920's and earlier. Nevertheless, building inspectors don't like them despite a good track record, and ditto for insurance providers and mortgage lenders. Buildings of dirt and straw have only been around for centuries; but just try educating a bureaucrat on the advantages and virtues of straw, cob, earth-bag or other 'unconventional' methods. Your time would be better spent building something.

Fortunately, it is possible to build with bales and still please all the white-collar leaches who will want a piece of your project. Construct a frame to hold up the roof and use the bales as infill between the members. Only, don't do it the way I did. You may recall I used 6" poles spaced 10' apart. The bales I used averaged 14" high x 18" wide x 36" to 42" long. Placing blocks of such varying lengths in a 10' space virtually guaranteed lots of time-consuming shortening, notching and fitting of bales around the posts, window and door frames. If I had to do it over, I would design a frame that was the full width of the bales, and I would base the span between vertical supports upon the average length of my bales. In my case a 9' or 12' span between vertical framing members would have been much easier and faster. And if my frame had been the full width of the bales, I would have had no notching to do. Once your frame is up, you then have the option of roofing the house or stacking bales. Provided you don't live in a windy area, I would roof the house first. That way, the bales can be kept dry and yet close at hand while you fit them around the frame. As an aside, I didn't roof first because it is usually windy and dry where I live. The year I built the house, though, there wasn't much wind, but it rained buckets that spring. We ended up mulching our garden with lots of soggy bales. A word to the wise is sufficient.

I don't know much about earth plasters and such, since mine is finished with fiberglass reinforced cement stucco. In dry areas, I understand that earth or adobe plasters work very well. If I were to use them, I would want generous roof overhangs and no bales within a foot or so of grade. Around here, it's basically dry, but when it does rain and snow, there's likely to be wind as well. That's the main advantage of stucco; it won't erode away in a driving rain. Basically, we pinned chicken wire to our bales and had the 1st coat of stucco blown on at 80 psi, inside and outside. We wanted that first coat to be tightly wed to the bale walls, excluding all air, and it was. The 2nd and 3rd coats we troweled by hand. I say troweled, but we actually used our gloved hands more then we used the trowel. The result was a lumpy, organic, sculptured look. I'll try to figure out how to post pictures sometime.

A few more do's and don'ts. Any electrical switches, fixtures, outlets need to be in conduit. It's easy to flush mount all of this stuff in bales. Just take a claw hammer and gouge a hole for your box and a trench for the conduit, pin in place with big wire staples and hang chicken wire over it. Stucco away. Plumbing is a whole 'nother animal. Don't run plumbing inside bale walls at all, you're only asking for trouble. Design interior plumbing walls and run all your pipes in them.

And now, the icing on the cake. My house cost $35.00 a square foot, in 1995-1997. (Yes, it took nearly 3 years to finish it. I am the world's slowest general contractor.)