Straw Bale House Roof

All straw bale houses need a layer of plaster on the outside to keep water out.

Straw bale house roof.

The papercrete is completely unsealed and thus breathable. A breathable strawbale vault is a difficult proposition. Video tour of an incredible underground hobbit home that is completely off grid. The bales have no structural value for the loads of the building which are all carried by the structural frame.

It was a hell of a task to pull it off especially since we loaded all the soil onto the surface of the roof one bucket at a time. For straw bale this can pose a problem in keeping the walls free from direct moisture. The weight of bales within a roof has to be a very serious consideration. It just has to be kept dry.

The easiest way to do this is with expanded metal lath at each course. While cement stucco is convenient and low maintenance it can cause moisture problems once it cracks and may actually keep the bale wall from drying properly. Post and beam or in fill and load bearing. Today insulated homes usually have r 20 in the walls and many old homes have r 14 for insulation or considerably less.

A good straw bale home is significantly warmer than conventional building methods because a well packed bale is rated at r30 r35 minimum or considerably more. The strawtron roof is lookin good and green these days when we built our two story timber frame straw bale house in 2012 13 we incorporated a green roof into the design. Most straw bale builders use clay based earthen plasters or lime plaster which require regular reapplication. There are two general styles of straw bale construction.

The straw bale roof constructed by dr zhang and blue mountains straw bale builder jason dash only took one day to erect. It is built with straw bale walls and limestone plaster log roof rafters an. If you were building in a fairly arid environment you might experiment with a papercrete plaster as i have done with my earthbag home. When attaching a straw bale addition to an existing house the biggest concern is to make sure that the two structures are tied together well.

Zhang s next project is to construct an entire habitable building in dubbo in collaboration with john dash and the landowner.