Get inspired and come visit our straw bale house gallery with hundreds of images of some of the most beautiful houses out there!
The idea of stacking straw bales to create a super insulated and natural shelter first appeared on the Nebraska plains over 100 years ago and some of these original homes are still in use.
Building with Straw Bale creates energy efficient, affordable, long-lasting structures from a simple, natural building material. Today’s straw bale homes are built to last, and offer comfortable, healthy, quiet, inspiring dwellings.
Wouldn’t it be nice to own your own green dream home, made with recycled and natural materials and packed with custom features? Whether you’re an experienced builder or have never picked up a power tool in your life, you can build a natural eco-friendly home with user-friendly, low-cost materials like cob, cordwood, straw and the […]
Meet Julia & John and their amazing self-built solar-powered straw bale home! They live in Central New York and took on the challenge of creating their own home with 1300 square feet of living space
Can you use exposed timber framing in straw bale home construction? Yes! Here are five areas to review during design and prior to building.
Jasmine and Simon Dale who feature in this week's Grand Designs have built a three-bed eco-home in Pembrokshire for just £27,000, using reclaimed mate...
This is a great way to save lots of money and have a great insulated house once its built.
I feel so lucky to have been invited to photograph Amberly Valentine’s home. Not only because this house is incredibly special, but also because Amberly is a highly coveted international photographer.
Arkin Tilt Architects design truly beautiful straw bale homes. They are pioneers in showing the world that straw bale construction can be sleek and modern.
As a waste product from Agriculture, haybales make a great sustainable building material. Haybales have excellent insulating properties and make for a very pleasing, organic finished result. Thatch…
We had the strawbales for our house delivered in mid December last year and there was a bit of huffing and puffing getting them unloaded from the truck and stored under cover. Would you believe that we had rain while we were unloading the bales from the truck, thankfully it was only light. On the morning there were 5 of us to unload the ~250 bales so it didn't take too long. Now we have the bales it was time to start putting them up. There are a few ways to make a strawbale house each with advantages and disadvantages. We chose the framed house with infill walls type of building. One reason was because our outer straw walls are reasonably complex and we didn't want the stress of having to get all the walls up and roof on before rain (this usually involves getting help in to get it done quickly). The downside with infill walls is that you end up with a gap at the top of the wall and roof that needs to be filled (but i'll talk more about this once we work out what we are going to do with our gap). The strawbale wall is basically made up of a bottom plate, strawbales and then top plate with straps from the top to bottom plate to compress the walls. All our outer straw walls are curved, which adds some extra complexity. The bottom plate does two things, it raises the bales off the floor to give you a moisture gap and it gives you a solid base to compress the bales against. For the bottom plate we ended up using 90mm x 45mm pine framing timber made up into frames that are 450mm width (the width of the strawbale) and trapizoidal in shape with the long edge 1000mm long (just over the length of bale). These were dynabolted to the concrete with 4 bolts each so that the frame followed just inside the edge of the concrete slab. Short pieces of strapping were then slid under the frame through notches made before bolting the frame down and the space in the frame filled with 25mm blue metal (bluestone gravel) so that the bales don't sink into the frame. The door frames were dynabolted to the floor, nailed to the bottom plate and attached to the ceiling with a block that was glued and screwed. The door frames were made up of 2 bits of 90mm x 45mm with noggings (like a ladder) and then a piece of 12mm structural ply glued and nailed to brace it and to give the strawbales a solid end to press against. The window frames are made like the bottom plates and the door frames, they are designed to sit inside the bales. We will probably attach the windows to the ceiling to add stability to the walls. The windows are curved with the walls. We also designed to windows to fit within a bale width. Later on the door and window frames will be lined (most likely with floor boards). We have half a wall to finish as of writing this post then we start on filling the gap between the top of the straw wall and the ceiling.
Meet Julia & John and their amazing self-built solar-powered straw bale home! They live in Central New York and took on the challenge of creating their own home with 1300 square feet of living space
A quick-start guide for natural homebuilders to navigate code approval. Contains helpful tips for dealing with code officials and finding resources.
Arkin Tilt Architects design truly beautiful straw bale homes. They are pioneers in showing the world that straw bale construction can be sleek and modern.
People are building their own homes without spending 30 years to pay them off. Small yes, humble yes, but paid of in five to ten years. Wh...
I got a bunch of books on straw bale building back before we starting building the cabin. Part of the reason was to educate myself in this great building method and another was to get design ideas.…
Finished toe ups with nails. Note there are no nails directly under the window sill. This is because the window sill is one bale high and the bale notched for the sill is a tight fit and far easier to place correctly if no nails go under the sill.
This charming home lies in the northern Catskill Mountains in Upstate New York – A fairytale stone house with a round door, swooping peaked slate roof and steeple! It was hand crafted by Clark Sanders, a veterinarian/artist who thinks of houses as sculptures you can live in, and is famous for his straw-bale houses. The …
This sustainable method of building uses baled straw from wheat, rice, rye or oats to construct and insulate the home.
Isn't she lovely?! This family did a beautiful job building their little straw bale cabin getaway. It will surely bring them decades of enjoyment!
Arkin Tilt Architects design truly beautiful straw bale homes. They are pioneers in showing the world that straw bale construction can be sleek and modern.
Whiptail is a recently completed strawbale home which forms part of the Wild Mountains Environmental Education Centre. It sits on the spectacular west-facing slope of the Border Ranges with living spaces oriented to the north to capture winter sun through large recycled timber doors and other spaces opening to the expansive views of the Scenic […]
