Honesdale, Pa. — If you could go back in time, say 1,000 years, to explain to someone how houses are built today, do you think they would be in awe over how much better our stick-built technology is over the stone structures of the time, or would they think we were crazy for living in houses built essentially with paper and sticks?
It may be that they would think we were crazy. But what if you told them grasses were the newest craze in super — efficient, highly weather and fire resistant building technology?
As counter-intuitive as it may seem, this is exactly the case.
Strawbale buildings are beginning to be recognized around the world as fitting all the above criteria, as well as being super cost efficient, nearly impervious to earthquakes and much more environmentally friendly than most contemporary building techniques.
Now, don’t expect to start seeing headlines about high rise buildings made of strawbales, but in terms of homebuilding, strawbales may begin to rival more commonly accepted technologies as the green building craze becomes more widespread.
“One of the things I love most about strawbale building is how inclusive it is,” said Mike Balasco, founder of the ReVerse Foundation at a strawbale building forum held by SEEDS (Sustainable Energy Education and Development Support) Tuesday. “Strawbales outperform more conventional building technologies in almost every way imaginable. And they are cost effective. They can be implemented just about anywhere.”
Through designing, building, educating and being mentored by some of the best in the field, Belasco says he has developed a deep appreciation for and knowledge of the strawbale building process. In addition to designing and building in the field, he received his bachelor’s degree from
He has received his natural building certification from Yestermorrow Design/Build School, and has also launched an educational institution in
He says the main appeal of the technology is in the fact that it is also low-tech, making it approachable to those who might not otherwise be able to be part of the building process on their own house.
This, he says, tends to draw people in when structures of this kind are being built in their area. House-building becomes a community affair as people gather round to learn about what seems like a new and off-beat building system, but has actually been around just as long as mechanical balers, which first appeared in the late 1800s.
In fact, Balasco says there is a courthouse still in use in
Where conventional fiberglass insulation in a stud wall operates at peak performance at 45 degrees Fahrenheit and drops quickly in efficiency from there, Balasco says a wall built of strawbales remains efficient regardless of temperature and takes about 12 hours to transfer heat or cold through its thickness, as opposed to mere minutes in a fiberglass insulated wall.
Coupled with the fact that strawbales can be notched and stacked in ways that drastically reduce the number of air spaces in the wall from conventional building methods, this leads to tremendous savings in heating bills.
“Right, but it’s straw! Straw is really flammable!” Balasco said at the forum. “That’s got to be dangerous.”
Wrong, he says. And he offers proof in the form of a time lapse video from official ANSI (American National Standards Institute — the accepted testing agency for regulation of building materials) burn tests to prove it.
While individual pieces of straw will burn at the mere suggestion of flame, the ANSI video Belasco showed the 25 or so assembled Tuesday shows flames shot at a strawbale wall with a common cement/lime plaster coating continuously for two hours with little effect on it. Afterwards, the wall was blasted with a fire hose for a full two minutes and continued to maintain its integrity. Another wall covered with an earthen plaster made of clay withstood a full hour’s flame exposure with similar results.
The reason for this, Belasco explained, is that the individual pieces of straw are packed together so tightly that there’s no room for air to get between them, leaving flame little hope of doing so.
“Paper is also really flammable, right?” Belasco asked the crowd, “But did you ever try to burn a phone book? You can’t do it. It’s the same principle. There’s no air between the pages, so they won’t burn.
Citing a Department of Agriculture study that says there is enough excess straw produced in this country every year to build four million 2,000 square foot houses, Belasco says each of those buildings would keep the money required to build them in the community while producing a safer, more efficient home with less environmental impact.
The only question, he says, is why people continue to spend more money on materials produced overseas at steeper prices that cannot perform as well.