Our House
When I was a child in school my teacher would write a quote on the chalk board every day. One of them went something like this; “Our ancestors had to carry water from the well, but they didn’t lose sleep at night trying to figure out how to pay for the bucket.” That saying has really stuck with me over the years. I thought that if I could do something with my own hands, why shouldn’t I? This led me to a life of hands-on living.
I have a natural curiosity about the makings of things, starting with my house. When I tell people I live in a straw bale house, the first reaction is usually a reference to the “Three Little Pigs”. The second reaction is generally surprise as the house appears to be quite typical from the outside.
The walls are insulated on the inside with about two hundred straw bales. After we had them delivered in a covered trailer, we carried them inside the outer shell of the house and stacked them up (the bales have to stay perfectly dry until they are sealed inside). We then stacked them neatly in the wall space and plastered over them, leaving our finished wall about 22 inches thick.
From a technical point of view straw makes brilliant insulation (R54), but on a personal level, walking into my house always feels like walking into a big hug, safe from the gales that blow outside my door.
In time we put in a small wind generator along with some solar panels, for the modern things like computers and freezers. But I still carry my water from the well in a bucket , and it all makes sense somehow.
