Tag: straw

A House Made of Straw

  • Joe and Shelly Trumpey and their daughters, Autumn and Evelyn. The family built their strawbale and adobe home with straw, sand, clay, field stone, and timber - all sourced nearby. (Photo by Steve Charles, Wabash College)

Most of us live in buildings made out of wood, concrete, steel or bricks. But some people are making their homes with bales of straw.


One couple in Grass Lake, Michigan, has spent the past two and a half years building a very energy-efficient home with straw bales. And it’s not just some little novelty project. Joe and Shelly Trumpey live in it, with their two daughters.


If you’re thinking Big Bad Wolf… Joe’s heard that one just a few times.


“That’s the most common joke, three little pigs, exactly.”

The Last Straw, a site about building strawbale homes

A blog about the Trumpeys from Joe’s alma mater

Transcript

But the fairy tale jokes stop the minute you turn the corner on the country road… and see the Trumpey home. It’s big… two stories, and more than 2,000 square feet. The outside is red adobe and it has a green steel roof. The whole thing is supported by a traditional timber frame and field stones.


Joe says they wanted to build with natural materials that they could get locally. They’re almost entirely solar-powered. And they wanted to live in a really energy-efficient house. Straw can do that.


“It’s cheap and the size of the bale gives you a lot of insulation.”


(door jingling as it’s opened)


Inside, it’s cozy even though it’s 20 degrees out with a biting wind. Joe says that’s because the walls are so thick. They have an insulation value two to three times greater than a conventional home.


And yes, they have electricity, running water, indoor plumbing. There’s even a flat screen TV hanging on the wall. Everything looks so conventional, you’d never know the walls are filled with straw.


“Here I’ll show ya. All straw bale buildings have a truth window – here’s a little doorway (sound of opening door) that we can open up that’s not plastered by the adobe so you can actually see the straw behind and show you the truth.”


And there they are: stacked bales of wheat straw tied with a red rope. The seed’s been removed so critters won’t eat it. But there are bigger worries.


“When you’re building the building all the open straw is a huge fire hazard at that point so we were really careful not to have any smokers around and no open fires. Once it’s coated with mud the fire proofing is really in place.”


Joe says you also have to let the straw breathe so it won’t trap moisture. Otherwise the walls could rot. He says the adobe plaster on the outside of the straw allows air to flow.


Before they could even start building, they had to win over their building inspector. Straw bale buildings are not in Michigan building code.


Tom Nolte ended up being Joe’s guy. He says inspecting a straw home was a first for him.


“Joe had his idea laid out for me and I simply left him with if you can get me the engineering details to chronicle how the roof would be supported and how it all ties together, I’d say let’s go for it! (chuckles)”


Nolte says Joe did that, and he’s satisfied the house is perfectly sound.


But building your house in an unusual way is not easy. Shelly’s a 3rd grade teacher, and Joe’s a professor. Before and after their day jobs… they worked on their house. They dug 50 tons of field stones out of their farm field. Joe milled every piece of wood himself. Shelly built the 35-foot high stone fireplace.


“My advice is don’t tell your wife how much work it’s gonna be before you get started because she’ll never go along with it! (laughs) The girls too. None of us had any idea how much work it was gonna be. (pause) To Joe: You did? Joe: It was more than I planned, but still, I knew (laughs).”


Joe and Shelly went through all this because they wanted to prove it’s possible to have a comfortable home with a small impact. One that uses natural materials from within miles of their home.


“I think it’s a great example for my students and for my children, in terms of being respectful to nature and living in this earth.”


You can see photos and a design plan of the Trumpey home at environment-report dot org.
I’m Rebecca Williams.

A House Made of Straw

  • After Carrie Zaenglein lost her home to a fire, she decided to build her dream home - made from straw. (Photo by Joyce Kryszak)

The big bad wolf gave straw houses a pretty bad reputation.

But it turns out straw bale houses are incredibly strong and

energy efficient. The century-old building material is making

a comeback as an eco-friendly choice for modern home

construction. And these homeowners aren’t afraid of a little

wind. One woman is even building a straw bale house in the

sometimes cold, blustery climate of the east. Joyce Kryszak

tells us her story:

Transcript

The big bad wolf gave straw houses a pretty bad reputation. But it turns out straw bale houses are incredibly strong and energy efficient. The century-old building material is making a comeback as an eco-friendly choice for modern home construction. And these homeowners aren’t afraid of a little wind. One woman is even building a straw bale house in the sometimes cold, blustery climate of the east. Joyce Kryszak tells us her story:

This does kind of start out like a fairy tale. On the edge of the industrial city of Buffalo, New York there’s an ordinary little village. It’s dotted with aging, modest houses.

Carrie Zaenglein used to live here. That is until she lost her village home to fire two years ago. But that didn’t frighten the quiet-spoken young woman away. Zainglein says it just gave her a chance to rebuild. Only this time she’s building her dream home out of straw.

“I’ve always been interested in green building and doing things the environmentally friendly way, so I figured while I had a chance to start over I would do it the way I wanted to do it,” said Zainglein.

But how to go about it? You see, straw bale houses are growing more popular in the southwest. But you won’t find straw house builders listed in the yellow pages of most eastern cities.

So, Zainglein did a little searching on the web and found Dave Lanfear. Turns out, he’s building a company devoted to straw bale house construction. And Lanfear doesn’t care how much he’s teased about it.

“Yeah, I hear the same kind of jokes, I think, the three little pigs… and the same type of questions, but I just have to laugh. Yeah, I hear them,”

Lanfear just digs right in and gets to work plastering Carrie’s two-story contemporary style house.

Lanfear says to do it right you have to get dirty. He fills the wood frame with tightly packed straw bales. Next, the walls are coated inside and out with layers of clay plaster. It’s made with clay dug right from the site. Lanfear says it’s very organic and sustainable. But he says it also withstands the test of time.

“There are homes in Nebraska they didn’t even know that they were straw bale – they were actually hay bale. The walls got open, they were doing repairs and they discovered this hay in there and it actually looked fresh and they were a hundred years old.”

He says that’s because the plaster seals out the moisture but still allows the walls to breathe. That prevents mold and keeps the house sound. It also gets high marks for fire safety. And because the wheat straw is a just a bunch of hollow tubes it creates the air space that makes it a good insulator. Virtually everything about the house is eco-friendly.

The house also has solar heat and power. And it’s made mostly with reused materials. Even the trees cut down to make room for the house were brought inside and used for the framing. And Zaingline says rebuilding on her same small lot near the city means she’s not adding to urban sprawl. She likes to think straw bale houses could be a trend.

“The difference you can make, even though you’re only one person. I think it’s important for everyone to make these changes even if their small.”

Zaingline says her little straw bale house stands up just as well as any house made out of sticks or brick. It might just stand up to the bluster of critics too.

For The Environment Report, I’m Joyce Kryszak.

Related Links

Farmers Work to Conserve Water

Some experts say water will be the “oil” of the next generation. As it become
more scarce, prices are going to go up. For farmers, that’s serious business.
Kyle Norris recently spent time with several farmers who say they think
about water constantly:

Transcript

Some experts say water will be the “oil” of the next generation. As it become
more scarce, prices are going to go up. For farmers, that’s serious business.
Kyle Norris recently spent time with several farmers who say they think
about water constantly:


Anne Elder and Paul Bantle are farmers, and they’re pretty hard-core about
water. They keep a hollowed-out rock — it’s like a natural bowl — next to
the barn, and every morning they fill it with fresh water for the farm’s
smaller animals:


“And this amazing thing the cat comes and drinks, the chipmunks come and
drink, the birds come and drink and the bees all drink from the same stone.”


These folks consider water to be a valuable resource. They use it to grow a
variety of fruits and vegetables on their eleven and a half acres. The farm is
a biodynamic farm. Which means it’s organic, but it kind of goes a few steps
further. Anne Elder says biodynamic farming emphasizes healthy soil, and
how to make soil benefit the most from water:


“Healthy soil means it’s alive, it’s active, it’s not compressed but fluffy. It
will have a lot organic matter which will make it more sponge-like rather
than compacted hard tight soil. So when it does rain or when moisture does come,
fluffy soil can take that in and it can just drain through and the roots can
absorb it.”


They till an organic compost into the soil. It’s made of manure, vegetable
matter, hay, and straw. And as biodynamic farmers, they spread herbal teas
on their fields. They do this to feed the plants, and to fight-off problems like
fungus. Their farm is in southeastern Michigan and they get plenty of rain
storms. Paul Bantle says they try to take as much advantage from the rain as
possible:


“Rainwater is way better than any kind of water you’re going to pull from
earth. Irrigation water is cold when it comes from 65 feet down, it’s cold.
Whereas rainwater is warm, in the summer, obviously. And in the late spring
and early fall.”


The thing about cold water is that it shocks plants that have been sitting in
the warm sun all day. And that’s no good. When they need to water the
fields, they pump water from a 65-foot well.


Bantle says he thinks long and hard before using this water for irrigation. He
doesn’t want to dig down further to tap deeper aquifers, even if that means
that the crops will go through a hard time:


“It’s an issue. I mean it’s a huge problem. So definitely I try to be very
conservative about pulling water for irrigation.”


Basically, there are two main irrigation techniques typically used in farming. The first is
drip or trickle irrigation, and this is what Bantle and Elder use. It’s a slow,
easy method that takes time for the water to soak deep into the soil. It’s kind
of like a light, slow rain.


The other technique is overhead irrigation. Picture your garden hose on
spray, with overhead irrigation the water sprays all over. The downside is
that it wastes water because it evaporates and runs-off from the fields.


Lyndon Kelley is an irrigation educator with Michigan State University and
Perdue Extensions. He says drip irrigation is like a mini-van and overhead
irrigation is like a school bus:


“It’s sort of like are you going to take three or four kids to the baseball game
after school each day, well then you’re going to take the mini-van. But if
you’re going to take fifty kids to the baseball game after school every day
then you’re going to want a school bus.”


So, drip is typically used on smaller operations and overhead is usually
used on the larger ones. But Kelley says drip irrigation can be used on larger
farms. It depends on how the roots of the plant take-in water. Grape
vineyards, tomato plants, and some other vegetables respond well to drip
irrigation.


The farm that Anne Elder and Paul Bantle run is a relatively small operation.
They pay a lot of attention to their crops and they water them accordingly,
and all that effort takes a thought and labor:


“It’s almost like a holding-back mentality. How can I let these plants do
what they need to do, until which time the rains will come.”


Farmers are going to have to reevaluate the ways in which they use
water. Some scientists believe climate change will make some places much
drier, and a growing population is already putting heavier demands on the
existing water sources.


For the Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

Related Links

Solving the Farm Odor Problem

The expansion of large scale hog and chicken farms continues to be acontroversial issue throughout much of the Midwest. The foul odor fromthe animal manure has angered rural residents. Now, scientists aretrying to minimize the stench by learning what makes manure smell sobad. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Steve Frenkel reports: