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Building Green With Straw: Location, Location,Location

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Building Green with Straw

Location, Location, Location

Building Green With Straw Urban Living

Straw Bale in the City - Image Huff'n' Puff Constructions

Interestingly many green homes, especially when people have been building green with straw,  have traditionally been built “out of town’ on a small holding or small acreage.

However, if living in such circumstance necessitates you driving long distances to work each day or to access other services using a private motor vehicle, this can potentially undo much of the benefit of living in a green home.

This doesn’t necessarily have to be the case though and many green home owners develop ways to ensure their impact outside the home is kept within acceptable levels.

This does not mean that a green home especially when building green with straw,  in an urban area is necessarily any better.

You may still need to travel some distance to work (much more slowly than your regional counterpart) and as homes in urban areas can be more expensive to buy or build, then issues of more than one job to pay the home loan become a reality.

Sustainability is a wide ranging subject when applied to your whole life when building green with straw, like any other project there are many things to consider.  Thoughtful design, thoughtful materials and thoughtful location will all combine to make your building green with straw experience well worthwhile.

If building green with straw is something you are interested in please visit this site for more specific information – yep I’m doing it again.

Green Home Building – There is Green and GREEN

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Green Home Building

There is Green Home Building  and GREEN Home Building!

Green Home Building - really?Green home building…

is a complex issue and right at the beginning is coming up with a general definition.  It seems that homes being promoted as ‘Green’ and even ‘Eco-friendly’ can range from the simplest dwellings you can create to the most high-tech monsters you can imagine.  It appears that the range moves from low-tech, passive design and construction to high-tech, active homes and almost everything in between.
Despite their obvious appeal can huge houses ever be truly green?  Sure we can do better than we are currently as we churn out ever more “McMansion” style homes adding features to make them more efficient but will this ever lead to sustainable homes  - to true green home building?   This is a big issue and one we have to collectively address.

Does green home building merely mean energy efficient or does it move towards creating a really sustainable style of architecture for everyone?

No wonder we have trouble defining just what a green home really is.  As always it comes down to our personal definitions and level of awareness.  Any steps towards reducing our energy consumption are to be applauded, likewise any steps toward reducing our impact (including our cultures addiction to shopping) will be rewarded in the long term.  As more people demand green home building options perhaps we will begin to collectively deliver viable alternatives.

Building Green with Straw – Which Construction Methods?

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building green with straw

Framework ready for infill construction (image - Photobucket)

Building Green with Straw – Which Construction Methods?

Building Green with Straw lends itself to different construction methods and when planning to construct a home using alternative building materials it pays to do a little research about what construction method is most commonly used in your area.  This may make it easier to get approval through your local authority and find tradespeople with experience in your chosen method.

Primarily there are two main construction types when building green with straw.  The first and often most common is to construct is “Infill or Post and Beam Construction” and use bales as infill between the posts.  The second is “Load Bearing Construction” techniques where the bale walls themselves take the load of the roof.

Whichever method you choose when building green with straw, it pays to do your research and find out all you can prior to starting.

Green Home Building: Speak with your Local Authority

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Green Home Building: Speak with your Local Authority

Green Home Building

Good relationships are essential - via Google Images

It’s a good idea to make contact with your local planning authority nice and early in your planning process. They have had a lot of experience and can be a real source of information about green home building along with what is and is not possible and acceptable in your local area. They are the people you will need to convince in the end so it is a good idea to develop a positive working relationship with them right from the start.

If you local authority is not ‘up to speed’ on green home building you can take the opportunity to inform them and in so doing pave the way for those intrepid eco home builders who will follow you.

Developing a strong working relationship will help your green home building process run much more smoothly and can save you a lot of time in the long run.

Green Home Building: Design Principles

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Green Home Building: Design Principles

When making your first attempts at a floor plan or design for your green home building project, there are some very basic but essential design principles to consider.

Don’t be daunted, you CAN do this at home!

You have some of your elements selected such as bedrooms, living areas and outdoor spaces, now all you have to do is put them together.  Solar orientation, window placement, cross ventilation, and your lifestyle will all impact on your design.  Don’t worry, just start drawing – this is something can can evolve over time as you learn more, create more ideas and gain more clarity about what it is you actually want.

Green Home Building

Image via Photobucket

One of the most important things to consider at this point of the process is solar orientation.  The long side of your home should face the sun, the window and door overhang should let the sun inside during the cooler months and keep it out during the warmer months.  This is a minimum requirement.

A good architect, draftsperson or builder can help you with other important details but this should be enough to help you get your ideas down on paper.  Get creative and don’t think your ideas are no good or too unusual.  If this is what you want then this is what will make your green home building experience rich and rewarding.

Building Green With Straw: Use a Renewable Resource

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Building Green With Straw: Use a Renewable Resource

In this age of growing awareness of limits to the resources we have available, straw is an excellent example of a renewable resource.  No need to wait for it either, unlike tree crops.  So when you are building green with straw it’s great to remember that this is an annual plant, eat the crop at the end of the season and build a new house in the spring. I’m sure no-one actually does that but that is the potential of building green with straw.

There is a ‘timber’ product that performs like wood, is stronger than steel and grows fast – really fast.  Bamboo and it is becoming a very popular ‘alternative’ building product for things like bench tops and flooring.

Building Green With Straw

Building Green With Bamboo?

When building green with straw it can be easy to get caught up in labels like sustainable building products.  Both straw and bamboo have incredible potential to be really sustainable materials but you need to ensure that you source them from a reputable company with ethics in line with your own.  Do your research when building green with straw (and bamboo) and reap the rewards.

Check out  the Building Green With Straw Store to find even more inspiration, information and resources to help you create the dream and begin Building Green With Straw.

Building Green With Straw: Let’s face it, they are Gorgeous

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Building Green With Straw: Let’s face it, they are Gorgeous

Have you seen a straw bale home?  Have you been inside one?  They ‘feel’ wonderful and this is because they breathe, they have sound qualities you just don’t get in many regular houses and although it’s difficult to explain in words as soon as you step inside one, you will know that this is a great building style.  This beauty is one of the things that motivates people to consider building green with straw.

Building Green With Straw

Image from Photobucket

There are qualities of a Strawbale home that lend themselves to a feeling of wellbeing.  Air quality is enhanced by the use of natural materials and the ‘breath-ability’ that comes with natural renders.  Sound quality is enhanced by the superior insulation qualities of straw.  And if good passive solar design principles have been adhered to, there is a quality of light that is very comfortable for the people who live in the building.  All these things combine to create a certain feel, a quality of life that is very comfortable and a real sense of beauty.  They are in fact, gorgeous!  If you think you might like to consider building green with straw, get hold of a book on straw bale building and set your senses alight as you see some of the lovely things that people have created.

Looking for a place to start and some inspiration?

Visit the Building Green With Straw Store.

Building Green With Straw: Practice Makes Perfect

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Building Green With Straw: Practice Makes Perfect

Building Green With StrawThe great thing about building green with straw is that it is perfect for the owner builder. If you think you really would like to use it then you can build yourself a small shed or perhaps a chicken coop to get the feel for this great material. It’s very forgiving and the results can be stunning.

There are many good reasons to build a practice building first; you can test different techniques, materials and styles.  It’s possible to create a strawbale wall in your garden or a strawbale seat.  Any of these projects would make a great introduction to the materials and processes necessary to attempt your bigger building green with straw project.

Permaculture, Youth, Music and the Future of Mankind

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Permaculture, Youth, Music and the Future of Mankind

I was checking out some of my regular RSS feeds this evening and came across this great one on The Permaculture Research Institute of Australia site. There is a good post on the site explaining just who and where these images were taking place so if you would like more information about Quail Springs, CA head on over and take a look.

For now though, the YouTube is too good not to share.

Do you think I over did it with the heading for this post? Upon reflection, knowing what I now know and feeling what I feel about the Earth… nope, I got it just right! Love to hear your thoughts. Post a comment, share an experience. Go on, I dare ya!

The Shame of Environmental Politics and Big Business

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The Shame of Environmental Politics and Big Business

This morning I read a great piece in The Age newspaper, that comes out of Melbourne, Australia.

It was written by Alan Gray, editor of Earth Garden magazine and Green Power Today (available from Earth Garden Books). He put his case against the recently announced Carbon and Emissions Trading scheme (called the Australian Carbon Trust), and I was so impressed with it I thought it was well worth providing you with the link to the article, so you could read it for yourself. The reason I like it is that he provides us with a simple, real life example of what some people are doing and what the potential impact of this proposal will in relation to his example.

Here are a couple of quotes from the article to whet your appetite and the link to the full piece is provided below.

The new Australian Carbon Trust announced by Rudd on Monday is a bureaucratic Band-Aid made to look like the Government is dealing with this issue. The trust is a poor response to this problem because it would force households or businesses to pay twice: once when they make the carbon reductions, and again when donating to the trust.

Contrast this with large polluters who won’t even pay once because of their massive “compensation payments”, or corporate welfare.

I really don’t think there are very many thinking people out there who believe for one minute that “band-aid” solutions are what is required in response to the looming impacts of climate change, but here is the government of an educated, politically active, western country attempting to hoodwink their populations by delivering a policy that is, frankly, absolute rubbish! Grrrr, I don’t usually get so irritated but this morning they really found where my goat was tied up! :-)

Here is another quote from the article which appeared in The Age:
As the draft legislation stands, none of the contributions made to date by householders by paying for GreenPower will count towards reducing Australia’s carbon cap. All these existing voluntary reductions will simply ease the pressure on big polluters — they will have to cut less because we have all cut more. Stinks like a tip full of methane, if you ask me. And experts, like Richard Denniss of the Australia Institute, predict that the GreenPower scheme will die overnight if the legislation is not amended. Why should householders reward the shareholders of giant electricity companies by making the cuts the companies should make?

Talk about pulling the rug out from under the feet of people who are voluntarily (and in large numbers) choosing to make choices that will benefit themselves, the whole of the community and the environment. Shame on you Prime Minister, Shame on you.

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/the-little-green-car-that-pays-for-itself-20090507-awk6.html?page=-1#