The search for greater sustainability to preserve the future is being looked for in the opposite direction, it seems – in the past.
Straw has been a key building material for thousands of years, used as a binding agent for mud and clay buildings, like the bricks made with straw in Egypt (and then not, because of Pharaoh’s hardness of heart), purportedly by Hebrew slaves. Everyone watched The Ten Commandments over the Passover/Easter holiday, right?
But another element of straw as a building material is its natural insulation properties. And because it’s a waste product these days, and not really a prime building material as it once had been, it’s making something of a comeback in this age of sustainability. But, how exactly?
This article about straw houses from the Economist talks a bit more about the modern applications of straw. And it seems that, with some flexibility, the construction of straw-insulated structures haven’t diverged much from historic methods of building with straw, either. From the article:
Modern straw buildings start with a foundation of gravel held in the kind of plastic bags used for vegetables at a grocery store, and covered with a soil mortar. The walls are made of tightly packed straw bales held together with bamboo pins and lined with fishing nets. These are then coated with a clay-based plaster. Aesthetically, the final product is similar to stucco or adobe, but because its components—clay, gravel, straw and netting—are more flexible than brick, concrete or steel, it is much more ductile and thus able to absorb seismic energy.
The seismic energy-absorption is a very important point in relation to using straw as a modern building material. This is not simply about sustainability of resources, but also has implications on quality of life in the Third World. It has been tragically proven that the lack of sturdily-built structures during earthquakes and other natural disasters directly causes appalling loss of life. The most recent examples of this are Haiti and Peru, with other examples in rural China, Pakistan, and in Turkey. This makes the inexpensive development of robustly designed buildings in these areas very important to the lives of people living in some of the most densely populated, and poorest, regions in the world.
To me alternate building materials that are cheaply sourced, and innovatively used, will be the next evolution in modern design and construction, particularly in these areas. This is partly to do with sustainability, of course. But, it’s also partly to do with keeping families sheltered more efficiently, in relation to their environment. This is an interesting idea – that the go-to materials of the past may be a key to that evolution. And perhaps the idea that ‘progress’ is linear, and not cyclical, may need something of an overhaul, too.
For more information about Darcey Donovan, the structural eco-engineer mentioned in the Economist article who is working in Pakistan with straw-based structures, visit paksbab.org.
Cheers,
Rob
Thank you Warren Brush and David Eisenberg and Rob Jones. We are in full accord. Straw is not only “an ideal building material” for scientific and technological reasons, but it can provide the basis for building “SAFE Homes™” – Sustainable, Affordable, Future-proofed and Energy efficient – throughout America, and especially in the earthquake prone Third World. Think Pakistan, Haiti and Chile. But also think American Indian reservations beyond the few with successful gaming operations, where the chronic poverty, life expectancy and sub-standard housing conditions fall just behind those which the world is trying to address in rebuilding Haiti.
Many American Indian reservations, where Tribes with up to 40,000 years of “green economies” in North America under their belts, are now plagued with a severe shortage of healthy, affordable housing, massive chronic unemployment and extremely young (median age under 19) and rapidly growing populations. These conditions mirror the plight of Third World communities right here in America, where four of the top 5 poorest counties in America are located in South Dakota, and include the Crow Creek, Pine Ridge, Cheyenne River and Rosebud Indian reservations found in the heart of the wheat belt on the northern Great Plains.
With a dire housing need for over a quarter of a million new homes in Indian Country generally, this natural building technology is ecologically appropriate but labor-intensive. The Indian word for that is “jobs”. This homegrown construction technology, invented in western Nebraska in the 1880s, can provide reservation based American Indian youth, who today suffer suicide rates 2.5 times the national average, with skilled and meaningful jobs for an entire generation in the building of ecologically compatible, quality homes that sequester atmospheric carbon, avoid burning coal, reduce energy bills, save water and better prepare rural communities to be more resilient in the face of the more frequent, record-setting weather extremes predicted under climate change and the “natural disasters” actually experienced again this past winter.
The Intertribal Council On Utility Policy (IntertribalCOUP.org) recognizes that living on an Indian reservation in the U.S. you are 10 times more likely not to have electricity than anywhere else in America. And if you do have electricity, it is likely to be predominately coal based and you are paying a far greater portion of your household income for it. Under these circumstances, a well-insulated, passive solar home, being “smart” without any more gadgetry than necessary, built with local labor from natural local materials, like straw bales and earth, can be the most intelligent active choice we can make for affordable passive sustainability and enhanced quality of life!
Straw bale homes can help insulate vulnerable tribal communities throughout the drought stricken west from accelerating energy costs and the increasingly life-threatening weather extremes forecasted for the region. There may also be elegant applications of this technology in Alaska, where the Corps of Engineers has estimated that nearly 200 native villages, on the front line of global warming, will need to be relocated in the coming decade due to ongoing coastal and river erosion and the melting of ancient permafrost.
Through the course of human history, the construction, maintenance and operation of our buildings have had the greatest energy related impact on our environment than all other human activities, including wars, water access and delivery and transportation infrastructure construction and use. The fine art of turning an agricultural waste product into a energy saving wall system can have widespread benefits for the world’s neediest grass-roots communities and the planet, from the ground up.
All Hail Straw Bale, the Great All-American Insulator!
Bob Gough, Secretary
IntertribalCOUP.org
Rosebud, South Dakota