The message
from "Pinky" contains these words:

Are there many strawbale houses in your area? I ask because then you could
get an idea of how they hold up in cold, wet climates - I am assuming that
Shropshire is not the tropics of england ;o)
Will you be able to do or have you done a strawbale course? They're
(strawbale houses) a fantastic, less expensive building option.

There are a few being built in Britain now. I bet like me David and
Graham have been hooked on a great TV series ongoing here, called Grand
Designs, following some ambitious alternative newbuilds from concept to
completion (or not, in some cases...). Don't miss it if it's syndicated
elsewhere; there's a book-of-the-series available too. One was a
strawbale house; it was wonderful but iirc the cost was not very
different from conventional build. By far the cheapest was a green-wood
construction house designed and built for himself by a coppice woodland
worker, using trees he selected and felled from his woods.

So far as wet-climate/straw goes, a strawbale construction would need
similar care to cob, a very old traditional English construction system,
using (iirc) a mash of straw, mud, cow manure and smallish stones, with
a smoothed-over outer-face coated with lime. If cob walls are kept dry,
particularly at the top and bottom, they last centuries. The roofs were
low, steep and thatched with straw, (high insulation), rammed so tight
and thick that rain rolls off. Replacement straw-thatching is still
practised on those buildings today; as seen on many chocolate boxes and
jigsaws :-). Care has to be taken to keep out birds and rodents who are
attracted to straw and can find the tiniest gap or shrinkage and loosen
it for their own housing. I imagine they might be a future hassle with
strawbale buildings too.

Janet.







Janet.