"The future we want is built with sticks and straw." Absolutely! The low carbon future we want is also likely to be built as walkable urban environments with higher density rather than one or two story single family homes in sub-urban or rural environments. We need a sticks and straw housing construction model that works at the goldilocks density, likely involving four to six story multi-unit residential building types. Light frame wood construction is the low carbon method that is currently best suited to these building types, using prefabricated wood frame structural components. It would be great to see straw based insulation products coming into the market that can be field applied similarly to how we currently use dense packed blown in cellulose or fiberglass. That would be a real game changer in terms of providing the grounds for scaling the use of straw by-product and for further reducing the upfront carbon in the typical assemblies at these buildings. They will need testing to demonstrate fire and sound performance (we practitioners will need listings!) and ideally they will be cost competitive with the current materials.
After 40 years of experience I can say straw is a beautiful way to build. Light straw clay, bales, panels, straw rich adobe, and more. Some of the straw panels have been superb but never reached a large audience. The fire resistant walls with clay, lime or other plasters are very durable with good design detail. I visited some very old straw bale buildings in Nebraska - still porividing superinsulated, quiet, and stable walls. The big bales have been used in Australia and straw bale buildings are around the world. With true cost accounting for climate change we would see many more. The Last Straw Journal has been a good way to keep up. david bainbridge
It might be a stupid question, but what about mice? When we and others were renovating and insulating old French stone buildings, there was a push for hemp or sheep's wool insulation instead of glass and rock wool, but we concluded the omnipresent mice would render it a mass of disease-ridden dust in no time, while the other forms posed and effective barrier and deterrent to them. When someone asked at a building exhibition they were just told, oh if you seal things effectively the mice won't get in, but we all knew that in old wood and stone buildings there was no way of doing that. People do new builds with straw here, I don't know how they go about it exactly.
Shading, heat capacity ("thermal mass" is a terrible term for several reasons), and night purge might be sufficient for Slovakian heat waves, but not for North American ones where the night time temperatures might be above 90F. You'll still need some AC. Similarly, vapor permeability might be nice in the milder parts of Slovakia, but when it's -20F or 110F and 50% humidity outside, you'll be fighting a neverending battle to keep indoor humidity at a reasonable level.
But yes, straw and wood are the way to go for low-rise buildings.
Straw bales make a very attractive surface. It'll be interesting to see whether straw bale structures can be built in significant numbers to make a meaningful dent in overall new home construction.
Has anyone figured out how many homes could be built with available straw? Is there plenty of straw to build thousands or hundreds of thousands of homes? And the big issue of course is cost.
"The future we want is built with sticks and straw." Absolutely! The low carbon future we want is also likely to be built as walkable urban environments with higher density rather than one or two story single family homes in sub-urban or rural environments. We need a sticks and straw housing construction model that works at the goldilocks density, likely involving four to six story multi-unit residential building types. Light frame wood construction is the low carbon method that is currently best suited to these building types, using prefabricated wood frame structural components. It would be great to see straw based insulation products coming into the market that can be field applied similarly to how we currently use dense packed blown in cellulose or fiberglass. That would be a real game changer in terms of providing the grounds for scaling the use of straw by-product and for further reducing the upfront carbon in the typical assemblies at these buildings. They will need testing to demonstrate fire and sound performance (we practitioners will need listings!) and ideally they will be cost competitive with the current materials.
After 40 years of experience I can say straw is a beautiful way to build. Light straw clay, bales, panels, straw rich adobe, and more. Some of the straw panels have been superb but never reached a large audience. The fire resistant walls with clay, lime or other plasters are very durable with good design detail. I visited some very old straw bale buildings in Nebraska - still porividing superinsulated, quiet, and stable walls. The big bales have been used in Australia and straw bale buildings are around the world. With true cost accounting for climate change we would see many more. The Last Straw Journal has been a good way to keep up. david bainbridge
It might be a stupid question, but what about mice? When we and others were renovating and insulating old French stone buildings, there was a push for hemp or sheep's wool insulation instead of glass and rock wool, but we concluded the omnipresent mice would render it a mass of disease-ridden dust in no time, while the other forms posed and effective barrier and deterrent to them. When someone asked at a building exhibition they were just told, oh if you seal things effectively the mice won't get in, but we all knew that in old wood and stone buildings there was no way of doing that. People do new builds with straw here, I don't know how they go about it exactly.
Shading, heat capacity ("thermal mass" is a terrible term for several reasons), and night purge might be sufficient for Slovakian heat waves, but not for North American ones where the night time temperatures might be above 90F. You'll still need some AC. Similarly, vapor permeability might be nice in the milder parts of Slovakia, but when it's -20F or 110F and 50% humidity outside, you'll be fighting a neverending battle to keep indoor humidity at a reasonable level.
But yes, straw and wood are the way to go for low-rise buildings.
Straw bales make a very attractive surface. It'll be interesting to see whether straw bale structures can be built in significant numbers to make a meaningful dent in overall new home construction.
Has anyone figured out how many homes could be built with available straw? Is there plenty of straw to build thousands or hundreds of thousands of homes? And the big issue of course is cost.