Following are some pros and cons of building a straw bale house. Like any building material, it is always best to evaluate your needs and your goals before committing to a particular material. Green building offers a wide range of options in achieving energy efficiency. When appropriate for your project, straw bale construction has many benefits.

Advantages of straw bale construction
1. Straw bales are made from a waste product. Once the edible part of the grain has been harvested (such as wheat or rice), the stalks often become a disposal problem for farmers. By bailing the straw, a new life is given to the material. The farmer makes some money by selling the bales and the homebuilder gains an excellent insulation and building material.

2. Homes insulated with straw bale can have insulation values of R-30 to R-35 or more. The thicker the bale, the better the R-value.

3. Straw bale walls are at least eighteen inches thick. This adds aesthetic value to the home as thick wall are expensive to achieve with conventional construction. The thickness of the wall helps to reflect sunlight throughout the room.

4. Due to the thickness of straw bale walls, every window can have a window seat or shelf. This becomes both an aesthetic and practical design element. (more…)

The greening of this downtown loft apartment will be a topic in this new series on how to adapt older buildings to higher ecological standards.

In my DVD video and book, “Building With Awareness,” I show the design and construction process of building a green home from scratch. With an emphasis on green building materials and the benefit of having complete control over the constructions process, you can see each stage of creating an energy efficient home from the ground up. By using a variety of natural materials such as straw bale, adobe, and earth plasters, it is possible to build an extremely green home with off-the-shelf components. For those who have the opportunity to start with a clean slate and an empty piece of land, this is an efficient way to go.

But what if you need to buy or rent a home that is already built? What if you desire to live in a city and the ability to use less-conventional materials is limited? After all, retrofitting existing buildings and homes will be an even larger industry than building new green structures. Millions of homes already exist and the majority of them need to be brought up to better energy efficiency standards.  How do you improve energy efficiency, lower your power bills, and limit your carbon footprint? (more…)

I am always intrigued with novel uses of common materials. Some enterprising individuals in Austria saw the potential of turning a concrete pipe into a hotel room. I like the clever way this small space was turned into a useable space—at least for short term use. When it comes down to it, this solves the problem of temporary shelter—safe, quiet, easy to maintain, and probably has a fairly constant room temperature due to all of the thermal mass. I can see using a shelter such as this as a temporary place to sleep while building a home on your property. WIth some straw bales around the exterior, it would be well insulated. Upon completion of the primary home, the pipe becomes the rainwater cistern or possibly an emergency tornado shelter.

more small hotel rooms: weburbanist.com
hotel: dasparkhotel