Straw Bale Wall Building

The Pros and Cons of Straw Bale Wall Construction

If the walls of your straw bale home are kept dry, they will last for the life of the building . 4. Areas of extreme humidity and rain my not be appropriate for straw bale construction. 5. Due to the thickness of the walls (usually around 18-20 inches), more of your overall square footage will be unusable due to it being within the wall space. 6.

This type of wall construction, known as "load-bearing", is still used to a limited extent on smaller 1-story homes. However, to achieve greater structural capacity and architectural freedom, the majority of straw-bale walls built today incorporate structural wood columns and bond beams (in various formats) to take vertical loads off the bales .

This particular example perfectly highlights why Straw Bale Wall Building is so captivating.

The wide variety of options in straw bale construction are rendered somewhat manageable by the numerous and reliable books about this type of building . A builder wishing to determine the best straw bale wall system for a project will be able to do so using the resources at the end of this section.

Useful Notes on Straw Bale Wall Building

This particular example perfectly highlights why Straw Bale Wall Building is so captivating.

Straw-bale construction is a building method that uses bales of straw (usually wheat [2] straw ) as structural elements, building insulation, or both. This construction method is commonly used in natural building or "brown" construction projects.