In Pictures: Come see the MacLachans’ house of straw
By David F. Rooney
To anyone who remembers their mother telling them the story of The Three Little Pigs, the entire notion of building a house of straw seems counterintuitive and just plain wrong. But fantasy ends and reality takes over at the Birch Drive lot in Upper Arrow Heights where Brice and Gill McLachlan are building their dream home out of straw bales.
This 1,500-square-foot building, which they hope to move into by the end of December, is a labour of love and imagination, helped along by Habib John Gonzalez, an expert in straw-bale design and construction.
One of the first questions almost everyone asks is about fire safety. Straw-bale houses, he says, have an R2 fire rating and as an insulation material they are rated at R35. But if you are building a moderate- to large-sized house you may not see the savings on construction material costs that you may expect by using a cheap material like straw.
Straw bales cost $2.50 to $4 depending on what time of year you are purchasing them and, for instance, the MacLachlans are using 240 bales. Still there are significant savings when it comes to energy.
“The real payback — even in a large home — is in energy savings,” Gonzalez said in a brief interview on Saturday, November 9, adding that the owners of straw-bale homes in Edmonton spend only $30 a month on heating costs.
Straw-bale construction is not a new way to build. Gonzalez, who has been building and research straw-bale house since the 1990s is familiar with
Straw bale construction began at the turn of the 20th century in the Sandhills region of Nebraska. Homesteaders lacked trees and sods to build their homes so they used recently invented balers to produce meadow hay bales to stack as wall material. The bales were laid like bricks, pinned together with wood stakes and the roof was built directly on the walls. The weight of the roof compressed the walls after they, the builders plastered them with adobe, lime plaster or traditional lime cement stucco. This method of straw-bale building flourished in this region until the 1940s when it was replaced by stud-frame building. In the early 1980s, builders in Quebec and New Mexico experimenting with baled-fibre construction. Research sponsored by the Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation determined plastered straw-bale walls had an R-value of 35, nearly twice that of a conventional stud wall and fire tests gave the stucco plastered bales a two-hour fire rating which is the equivalent to the requirement for commercial buildings. Historical photo courtesy of Habib John Gonzalez / Sustainable Works
a church built of bales in Sexsmith, Alberta back in 1954. And down in the Sand Hills of Nebraska “there are a number houses built in 1898.”
And then there’s the question of the domestic environment inside a house of straw. The air inside a house built to bales is fresher and cleaner than the air inside s standard home. And there are fewer —virtually none are used in construction — plastics emitting chemicals such as formaldehyde.
For Bruce and Gill this house is everything they want it to be.
“We have pretty much got everything we wanted,” Gill said.
Now all they have to do is sew up all the bales apply two inches of stucco inside and out and get rid of al the loose straw they have left over from this project. If you can use some or all of that material please call Gill at 250-200-2179.
Here is a selection of photos taken over the weekend at Bruce and Gill’s new home:
Gill and Bruce MacLachlan have been busy building their dream home on their lot on Birch Drive in Upper Arrow Heights. This a dream house with a difference. It’s being constructed from 240 bales of hay under the guidance of Habib John Gonzalez, an Edmonton-based expert on straw-bale building. David F. Rooney photoBecause the exterior of the house is draped with tarps it’s not readily apparent that this is a straw house. But steep beneath the opening in the tarps and you quickly see that this is a house with a difference. David F. Rooney photoGill poses in one the main living areas of the house. When completed it will be a single-storey, 1500 square foot house with a poured concrete floor and in-floor heating. David F. Rooney photoHabib John Gonzalez works on one of the building’s walls. A straw-bale construction expert, he has been working on these kinds of homes for decades. It seems almost counterintuitive but straw-bale homes have an two-hour fire rating and, when it comes to heat-retention, they are rated at R30. David F. Rooney photoall of the plumbing and wiring runs through tunnels bored through the bales. David F. Rooney photoThe interior and exterior of the house will be covered with a two-inch layer of stucco. David F. Rooney photoThe southwestern corner of the house is actually round and contains excellent views of Begbie and the Monashees through its windows. David F. Rooney photoGill and Bruce invited curious members of the North Columbia Environmental Society to drop b y on Sunday afternoon for a look-see and short talk by Habib. David F. Rooney photoBruce (left) and Habib demonstrated one of the last tasks they must perform before the stucco is applied: sewing the bales together. Using a long ‘needle’ Habib drives twine through the bale. Bruce grasps it on the other side, knots it and then works with Habib to ensure the bale is tightly sewn together. Habib said it would take them most of a day to perform this chore on just one wall. David F. Rooney photo
