Thanks for sharing... I'd be interested in some more details regarding your design and materials, as well as local building codes and cost. I've also been thinking about a small strawbale cottage in the Montreal area (Laurentians or Eastern Townships). Looking forward to the next post! And if you need any volunteers, just ask.

Straw Bale House

Congratulations on going thru all the 'trouble' and building a new house with the environment on the mind. We have moved from Montreal few months ago to BC, in the greater Vancouver area. Before coming here, we had plans to acquire land and build a straw bale house. Unfortunately, land is super expensive here and finding an empty lot upon which to build in the greater Vancouver area is hard. So for now we gave up on our dream. It will probably have to be our next house. We are trying at least to do renovations with little impact, and it pains me that it is so damn hard to find eco materials. Case in point: we ripped out the carpet in the house we just bought and want to replace it with hardwood flooring. We found out, after extensive research, that bamboo floring would be the best (for obvious eco reasons). However, there is also another side of the story. Not only do we want materials that are eco friendly, but also we want them to give-off no chemicals. Glue used in bonding the individual bamboo stalks together is bad for you. The varnish is bad for you. After much research, the only company in canada that makes true eco bamboo flooring is Silkroad bamboo flooring from Toronto. The bummer is they have no offices in Vancouver, so they'd have to ship the wood here. That costs money, and yet the bamboo comes from China, and where do you think it is received? In Vancouver! Yet they have to truck it to TO, and then they would ship it back to Vancouver. So what's the point of being eco? By the time the wood gets to me, I would have polluted the planet with needless shipping across the entire country twice. And then when some planks will be bad (or due to stapling it - bamboo is hard and sometimes cracks) I have to ship them back to TO.

Often times I just feel like giving up and going to Home Depot and buying their bamboo flooring. But that one is not truly eco!

I am also looking into companies or dump sites where construction materials are dumped - i'd like to reclaim some wood for constructing my various projects around the house, such as two big sheds and one greeen house. Anyone know of such places in TO?

Oh and if anyone needs help with building a straw bale house, contact me. If I have some free time, I would like to help. Greater Vancouver only pls. Write to: nikdo at photontrophies dot com

This looks great. Make sure to have a pro inspect the reclaimed lumber for termites, carpenter ants, etc. before inviting them into the new home.

Is this really a strawbale house or is it a stick framed house with straw bales?

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editor note: There are many ways to make straw bale houses. This one is not load bearing (and in this climate, that's probably as well).

Peter (and all), I would suggest ditching the bamboo altogether and going with small diameter timber harvested by a local grower who uses low impact forstry techniques. you shouldn't have troubl finding one within a hundred miles of Vancouver. The wood will be eco friendly and you won't be supporting a regime that enslaves its population and destroys its enviroment on a scale that makes the US look like the garden of eden.

I love the idea of a house using recycled products and being energy efficient but as far as I can see from the pictures, the only thing all that novel thus far is that the pink insulation between the struts has been replaced by straw or maybe I missed something. The extra overhang of the roof was not all that radical, do you really think that will change the temperature within all that much?

It is great to see another straw bale building going up. I just finished Fleming College's Sustainable Building Design and Construction course at their Haliburton campus. It was a really great experience, and was featured here on Treehugger. If I lived closer to this project, I would gladly volunteer. I look forward to the future posts.

I have seen a lot of house designs mentioned here at TH, and a lot of those were from architecture competions, university demo projects or professional firms. I have to say that I think this is probably, in my opinion, the 'greenest' house I have seen come out of this site. It is small, passive solar, with a large dose of renewable building materials, and reclaimed ones too, with a masonry fireplace (very appropriate in northern climates), looks like it has good windows, and I suspect they will install some renewable energy sources. This is the type of house that should be promoted everywhere.

When I originally designed my own home, I had the intention of building a strawbale load-bearing house. I had done all the desings and drawn up the plans (while living in Finland), only to find out that the tract of land in northern Spain where I had intended to build - which I had inhereted from my mother - was specially protected for exclusive farming uses. It was illegal to build a house. Which was a shame because that tract of land was being used for growing wheat by my mother's uncle, and the strawbales were there onsite, free of cost and no need to transport. I found a new place only to be disappointed again. I then found out it was illegal to build any strawbale building in Spain. Why? Because there was no construction code on the books for strawbale. I could have gotten an experimental permit, but I would then have had to pay for all the legal tests on my home that would have been needed to help develop a code. This would have raised the cost of the house astronomically. I am glad to see Canada is not the same. I hope Spain takes example and gets its act together soon.

One negative view I had at the beginning of the post was that this home is not load-bearing and therefore required a lot of wood framing for structural support. But I quickly changed my mind for a number of reasons. First, he reclaimed much of it. That is great. Second, the rest probably came from a local source - probably an environmentally responsible one. And third and most critically, as someone mentioned, being Canada with large unpredictable snowloads, load bearing strawbale walls are usually inappropriate unless the roof is very well designed and built. Considering that they plan to have a flat green roof, load bearing walls are out.

In the South African town of Orania thye are experimenting with building houses of bales.

The walls are plastered with the same material used for covering pools, the house also have a "living roof" with grass and wild garlic planted on it and there is a "bat hotel" where bats stay. The bats help to reduse the insects in the house.

What about cork flooring? I thought that was fairly eco.

"but as far as I can see from the pictures, the only thing all that novel thus far is that the pink insulation between the struts has been replaced by straw or maybe I missed something."

It's not supposed to be the most radical house ever, but it does have a larch roof and green roof, is extra insulated to reduce energy demand (both cooling and heating), uses non-toxic renewable materials for insulation (straw, cellulose), and once it's done the exterior and interview walls will be covered in locally produced clay, saving some more materials.

"The extra overhang of the roof was not all that radical, do you really think that will change the temperature within all that much?"

Yes, quite a bit here. Maybe closer to the equator the different in the sun's angle wouldn't be as great, but in Canada, yeah.

There are many excellent books on how to design passive solar houses, if the subject interests you.

Great comment, Houston. Too bad you couldn't build a straw-bale house in Spain.

Any idea of what the per sq. ft price will be when complete?

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editor note: I'll try to find out.

Everyone,

excellent posts. Especially huston. I have a question directed at bovis or anyone else for that matter who can answer it.

bovis mentioned 'small diameter timber harvested by a local grower who uses low impact forstry techniques.' How am I supposed to interpret that?

These qre questions that come to mind:

1) is this a better alternative simply because it's local and doesn't have to be shipped from china?
2) small diameter timber - is the idea here simply that of 'small timber' needed less time to grow? And then the 'responsible' company plants new tress? Still, I would think it takes 10 years for small lumber to grow, no?
3) 'low impact forestry' - what exactly is that? Do you mean the Forest Stewardship Council (did I get it right?)
4) How can ANY timber, low diameter, coming from low impact forestry, etc. EVER compete with bamboo? Bamboo is technically grass, growing at an unprecedented rate. I think I read that in china, it is being harvested every 7 years, and all of it comes from the same lot, because they replant it. So, is the issue simply one of the distance the bamboo has to travel? Or is it that politics come into play - china being a dictatorial regime (yeah, but if you look at this, US is becoming a fascist dictatorial regime: http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-3254488777215293198&q=america+taxes+illegal)?
5) What is better? Bamboo floor shipped from china, and thus the giant ship spewing pollution into our atmosphere OR cutting forrests in North America with less pollution due to shipping?

I ask all these questions because this matters to me a lot. But I am unsure as to what is better and would appreciate any feedback.
Thank you

I only have one comment to make... "fire-trap".

And I sure hope you don't have bushfires in Canada.

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editor note: Actually, straw bale walls are covered in a plaster or ciment and lab tests have shown that they are more fire-resistant than "normal" wood frame houses. The straws are mechanically compacted together so tight that the walls are very dense and there's almost no air in them.

First off I would like to say that you are doing much more than most people do for the environment, but I do see the persons point about the house not being very eco-friendly. Straw bale houses can be built load-bearing with alot less lumber and there are many other options for foundations and insulating foundations. Also to argue the comment on it being a fire trap, straw bale is by far one of the best in ASTM's(American Society for Testing Materials) eyes. If you would like proof visit this link. http://www.dcat.net/about_dcat/current/standards.php
and click the .pdf file and you will see the actual test conducted and how they compared to convetional housing. Good luck and thank you for taking our environment into consideration. Love, Light, and Peace.

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editor note: Load-bearing doesn't really work in Canada, and I think it would be against code even if they had wanted to do it.

Info re small diameter timber and low impact forestry.

I had a state forester walk a 40 acre tract I was thinking of buying. I planned to build on part and sustainably harvest timber. He pointed out that a large number of small trees were growing closely together (about 8 feet apart) and that about 1 in 8 or 10 should be selected as a timber tree and the others cut down as they would die after a while. These trees were about 7 to 9 inches in diameter. He said that in 15 years when my grandchildren needed college money, the selected tree would be about 18 to 20 inches in diameter and ready to harvest. By harvesting large individual trees, and dragging them out with a small tractor or horses, small trees would be able to grow to large size, contrary to clear cutting techniques. He gave me the name of some timber cutters who were careful, and some who were not. He also said I could hire a commercial forester to walk the land, estimate value of various trees for harvest, indicate some large ones that were poor timber trees, but good for shade and wildlife, and in general harvest without damaging the totality of the forest environment.

Houston (and any others interested), please see http://www.casasdepaja.com/ for the strawbale network in Spain.

With reference to the editor's comments about load bearing straw buildings not working in Canada I can only say that this is nonsense. There are many load bearing straw structures in Eastern Canada (e.g., in Ontario) that have held up quite well to heavy/unpredictable snow loads. True, good roof design is important. Moreover, local codes may prevent this type of building. It is not, however, inherently weaker than a framed structure with bale infills.

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editor note: You might be right. I was basing my comment on what I saw in the straw bale books I was reading at the time. I think most of it might be that codes don't allow it..

Hi,
I am looking into building a straw house on my land in the Pontiac region North of Gatineau. However I am concerned with the hurdles to get a building permit. How did that go for you. I am no where near being ready, maybe in a year or 2 but I saw a lot of sites saying they would not allow straw bale construction in Gatineau.The sites I looked at were from 2005. Any info qould be appreciated