Straw bale homes!

[lavalinda]

Anyone built a straw bale home...just wondered if it would be an option?

[Carey]

We help with a rice straw bale wall at the Solar Institute in Calif...
two things I can see here, cost of straw bales & the straw quality to handle the weather here...

[pslamont]

I think too wet here to be practical

Just another day in P A R A D I S E !!

[John S. Rabi]

Don't forget the building codes either.

Aloha,
John S. Rabi ABR,CM,CRB,FHS,PB,RB
808.989.1314
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[Hotzcatz]

The Building Department will love them, I'm sure. Guaranteed you'd need an architect's or engineer's stamp on that one provided you could find one who would stamp it.

Hmm, humidity. Straw to compost, might be best to build the house near the garden just in case humidity got into the walls. Ah, bugs! Don't forget about all the lovely critters which will find a home in the walls. Centipede Central?

I personally have never met a straw bale construction of any type, but I don't know of any around here and there's probably several reasons why. Cost of straw bales might be a reason, too. Isn't most hay and straw shipped in?

[Guest]

"Little pig, little pig, let me come in." And the little pig answered, "No, no, I won't let you come in, not by the hair on my chinny chin chin." "Well," said the wolf, "then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in." So he huffed and he puffed and he blew the house down and swallowed the first pig (who built his house of straw)"

The home is where the Heart is. I've seen a lot of un-permitted homes and I've seen homeless people.

If you own the property and aren't worried about picking up things like insurance.... you can build your house almost any way you want.

Good luck getting some utilities on structures that are not up to code though.

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Lower your expectations and be ready for anything.

[waynesb]

I believe the reason for straw bale houses is primarily insulation using a cheap and available resource. Houses in Hawaii don't really need much insulation, and straw bales are not locally available. So no straw bale houses.

[Punamom]

You could do the cement houses made with Styrofoam, There is a guy here who does that. I think he just got it through the permit process.

[Hotzcatz]

Straw is over twenty dollars a bale, isn't it? I don't see that as very cheap at all considering how many bales you'd need.

[MarkP]

There are places in the country where straw bales are dirt cheap, where straw is a waste product to be disposed of. Not here though because we don't grow those kinds of crops. Also insulation is not so critical here that you can't do without it. In many places in Hawaii thermal mass would produce very good results.