Originally published February 13 2006
Interior designer chooses straw to insulate her house
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Interior designer Marcia Wolff talks about her practical decision to build a house of straw, which will effectively eliminate her need for air conditioning and drastically reduce her heat bill.
The resulting house will resemble a stuccoed home, with high ceilings, thick exterior walls, deeply recessed windows and interior plaster finishes that lend an old-world feel --- rich details that will be accompanied by a miserly heating bill.
People who think about straw-bale houses think they're very hippie or very unconventional," said Wolff, who runs an interior design business, Design Council.
It was developed about a century ago in the Nebraska Sandhills, where the soil was too sandy to build the sod houses that were common on the Great Plains, said Mark Hoberecht, a NASA engineer and natural-building consultant who is working with Wolff on her house.
Figures on the insulating value of straw bales vary, but the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy puts it at R-50 --- about three times that of a wall system using fiberglass batting.
Wolff was drawn to the idea of straw construction by both its practical considerations and its use of nontoxic materials.
She learned about it through her involvement in the Cleveland Green Building Coalition, which she joined out of a desire to learn more about alternatives to the common building materials that she believes are contributing to high cancer rates and harming the environment.
The plaster has a lower moisture content than the straw, Hoberecht explained, so it draws moisture out of the bales.
All the switches will be on interior walls, and receptacles on the outside walls will be attached to structural members that protrude into the room from the window frames --- a design that will allow window seats to be constructed easily.
Another question that's commonly raised about straw-bale construction is whether the straw will burn easily, but Wolff and Hoberecht say it has a better fire rating than conventional 2-by-4 construction.
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