PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
STRAW BALE CABINS
and auxiliary buildings
Parainen, Finland, 1997-
The design is based on straw bales and recycled windows, sleeping space for four, and the possibility for simple cooking and a stay in the house. It is a natural aspect of straw-bale construction to minimize openings in the walls. The windows and doors of the house are placed as walls between the straw-bale walls which have no fenestration or openings.
In order to minimize transport local materials are used as much as possible. The straw-bales are made in the fields of the local farm and dried during the winter in a nearby barn. The timber for the bearing wooden skeleton is from the local forests, the foundations are of unworked stone, and the recycled windows are from the old Littoinen broadcloth mill. The tar is made in a small tar-burning pit a kilometre from the site, and the plaster is made of local clay, sand, straw and cow dung.
Three cottages and a servicebuilding are for the moment built and the design for the whole area with auxiliary buildings is on a project level.
Do you anchor or tie the bales together or are they just stacked? I've become interested in straw-bale constuction and have seen references to various ways of tieing the bales together to increase their strength, but I haven't actually seen how this is done or what implements and tools are used. I'm looking to build in Florida (USA), so the structure should be strong enough to stand up to a hurricane/cyclone.
How does the exterior clay plaster stand up to animal and insect life? Here we have many "mud-daubing" species, that build nests or cacouns out of mud on just about any surface they can find. Do you have problems with insects burrowing into them?