Straw Bale Construction Web Information

Straw Bale construction has over 100 years experience in America. Recently many new efficient homes have been built with bales of straw. This page brings some of the net available information together for educational purposes.

• Follow the recent discussions of straw bale construction professionals in the mailing list archive.

  To subscribe to the list (about 10 messages a day), send mail to majordomo@crest.org with the message:

  subscribe strawbale

  If you'd like the digest form (only one message of e-mail with all the lists posts included) make the message:

  subscribe strawbale-digest

  And you'll be on!

  Financial contributors to the list are very appreciated, as are all the people who post messages.There are somewhere around 700 people subscribed to this list at any given time.

• If you're interested in efficiency, check out "The Thermal Resistivity of Straw Bales for Construction".

• A very good, complete list of strawbale people has been compiled by a strawbale list member, Larry, lkishbau@ccmailpc.ctron.com. This is people who wanted it known that they are involved in strawbale construction.

• Most internet resources on straw bale construction can be found at Surfin' StrawBale, or the Other Surfin' StrawBale (the content is mirrored).

  JoE's disclaimer: if you go to this site, and find all the valuable straw bale information located on the net, you will soon find yourself involved with the construction of a straw bale building. We are not responsible for the next step that you will take, construction of your own home made from straw bales. You are warned.

• You can view an Adobe Acrobat form (click here for Acrobat viewing software) of a publication by Ann Edminster titled "Straw Bale Construction, How environmentally friendly IS it? (20 pages, 178k file).

• Two related subjects are bamboo and earthships. Bamboo is a material that is sometimes used in construction of straw bale structures. The American Bamboo Society has a great wealth of bamboo knowledge. Thanks ABSW!

• Earthships are high mass buildings made from discarded tires. These concepts can be incorporated into strawbale buildings.

• There is an organization that sells books, pamphlets and videos on strawbale construction called "Out On Bale by Mail," located in Tucson, Arizona (1037 E, Linden St, Tucson AZ 85719). They publish a newsletter called The Last Straw. Take a look at a recent BRAN article in The Last Straw: Article: Research and Testing Update: No BRAN Flakes, (smiley) by David Eisenberg. And a post by DE regarding CODE.

• You can get some help for buying straw at this site. It is mostly for hay, buy hey, it has some straw, and you might get some good leads from the e-mail linked farmers.

• View some images and information regarding a two story building built in 1945 located in Emerald, Nebraska, 6 miles west of Lincoln, Nebraska. Speaking of Nebraska, here are a few pictures from Arthur County, Nebraska of a church taken by Deon Bahr, AIA.

• David A. Bainbridge's slide show illustrates a history of construction from Nebraska, California, Arizona and more.

• Hay! How 'bout a Hay Bale structure? Testing being done in Bowie Maryland.

• Gary Shea's Straw Bale Resource guide

• And you can look at Eric D. Hart's Community Eco-Design Network.

• Straw House Herbals

• Alan Crabtree's renewable energy in "The Gorby Files"

• Friendly Thoughts--Colleen Thompson

• John Philip Cropper has complied a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban development document called DESIGN GUIDE FOR FROST-PROTECTED SHALLOW FOUNDATIONS . This document has very nice scanned images of foundations. Thanks John!

• Cross Timbers Permaculture Institute

• Strawbale Regional Assistance Program by James Lux

Last updated 4/16/97 MJE

URL: http://solstice.crest.org/ efficiency/straw_insulation/ index.html