Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
insulation. The walls of a conventional wood home will have an
R
value
between 18 and 24. A straw-bale wall between 18 and 24 inches thick will
have an
R
value between 2.4 and 3.0 per inch, substantially higher than
other building materials.
9
While building with straw bales is not new, the
renaissance that began in the 1980s with a handful of owner-builders who
were willing to experiment is now being carried on both at the grassroots
level by progressive home builders and at the professional level by architects
and contractors. Activists have worked to get building codes for straw-bale
construction passed all over the country and are now working toward a
national building code.
Straw-bale techniques have become sufficiently well known and
accepted in some locales that anyone who so desires can use them, even if
not committed to the philosophy of living lightly on the land and building
community. However, in order to gain the detailed tacit knowledge based
on experience that truly makes the technique viable, one must enter into
and interact with the community. Once exposed to the community, the
philosophy becomes integrated with the technique.
One couple had chosen straw-bale construction for their dream home
purely for aesthetic reasons.They bought lakefront property and planned to
simply hire a straw-bale-construction consortium and paid labor to con-
struct their home, because they felt they were too old for strenuous man-
ual work and could afford to hire professional builders. However, the
straw-bale contractor refused to take the job unless the couple agreed to
have a communal wall raising. Similarly, folklore in the Austin community
tells of unnamed individuals whose building project failed because they
intentionally remained isolated, not assimilating the experiential knowledge
of the group.
Communication in this growing network often takes place over the
Internet as well as in conferences, workshops, and newsletters, combining
low-tech, regional, hands-on knowledge with the electronic age. Much of
this building is taking place in the southwest, having originated in Arizona
and New Mexico, but was also adopted early in the movement in central
Texas. The network of humans and artifacts that has built the straw-bale
community along with straw-bale buildings is one of the prominent socio-
logical factors of significant interest here. Part of that network is the tech-
nology of hay baling, the development of which began more than 100 years
ago. In fact, straw-bale building has three distinct histories: the history of
the invention of the hay baler in the late 1800s; the history, linked to that
