Straw Talk

Straw Bale House Update: I've been asked how we became interested in Straw Bale and what resources we used. The net was a great place to start. We stumbled upon on this site which offered up some basic plans... although our house plan is totally different, we liked the roof and wall lines lines of this house. We asked people that had homes we liked, who designed their home and found the designer was receptive to learning about strawbale construction and adapting our vision into a workable plan.

The best book I've come across is Serious Straw Bale. It's a great read regardless of what type of bale house you're interested in. (I ordered ours though Amazon.) Andrew Morrison's site, http://www.strawbale.com/ has lots of free information, (although I did buy his cd's. + well worth it). If you think building Straw Bale is going to save you money, think again. This type of construction will likely cost you 20% more than a traditional balloon framed home. The savings (hopefully) will come with reduced power consumption. Our home is basically one large thermal mass for heat storage in winter and cool storage in summer. Our finished floor will most likely be concrete (although Hempcrete is interesting and more enviro friendly). The interior walls will be one inch thick lime plaster (limestone), for even more thermal mass and the main heat source is a super efficient Crossfire masonry heater. The heater should be able to heat the home with two, one-hour fires each day. More mason heater info.

More eco-chump (ism).... Is must be more environmentally friendly to vacation in Mexico every other year for 2 weeks rather that every year for one week. There must be some way to justify a vacation next year.

Saturday, a Denman Island Fire Dept. call-out had a tragic ending as a reported van fire was fatal to it's owner. The owner (who lived in the van),was a familiar face to all that live here and was certainly part of our diverse culture. Coincidentally, only two days before, I had given him a ride from the ferry to the village.

A tribute to Volunteer firefighters, well said.