PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
An Ecological, Affordable Home Prototype
“The Northern Cheyenne Tribe faces a severe shortage of housing with over 800 heads of household currently enrolled on our list waiting for homes. We would like to thank Red Feather for its assistance to the Northern Cheyenne community and for their effort to bring alternative housing to our reservation.”
— Linda Simpson, Acting Executive Director,
Northern Cheyenne Tribal Housing
As part of Red Feather’s American Indian Sustainable Housing Initiative, this project represents a family of replicable model, straw bale home designs for the Northern Cheyenne Nation of Western Montana. Together with other prototype homes on the Northern Cheyenne and neighboring Crow Nation, the house demonstrates that straw bale construction is an affordable and energy-efficient housing solution. In addition, these houses are constructed with community involvement, transferring straw bale construction skills to tribal members.
Designed and constructed with community involvement, these homes are vehicles for transferring straw bale construction skills to tribal members. The barrier-free floor plan, comprised of a concentrated wet core within an insulating straw bale envelope, allows for an efficient layout within a small footprint. This system can scale up or down, orient to solar and wind patterns for passive heating and cooling, and be partitioned flexibly in order to adapt to changing inhabitant needs.
Straw bale construction is amenable to community and volunteer participation. The material is a non-toxic and readily available agricultural by-product, and acts as a super-insulating envelope to give comfort, beauty and efficiency in colder climes. In this load-bearing example the straw bale walls serve as both structure and insulation.
This home design also takes advantage of solar gain. Winter sunlight enters south-facing windows and charges a thermal mass in the floor. A radiant floor system provides supplementary heating. Attic insulation is post-consumer cellulose (i.e., newspaper). A frost-protected shallow foundation obviates the need of excavation below frost line and is therefore less invasive than conventional cold-weather foundations. Concrete use in the foundation is minimized by the frost-protected design and by the fact that the quantity of Portland cement is reduced through the use of high-volume fly ash concrete; fly ash is a by-product of coal production. Site selection based on existing water flow and vegetation patterns assures minimal earth and plant disturbance during construction. Similar design and construction strategies are suitable in extreme weather regions where wheat, rice, or flax straw is locally available.
A landscaping palette of native species includes culturally appropriate useful and edible plants and trees which are locally available and receive rainwater from a non-polluting, standing-seam metal roof.
For more information on this type of straw bale construction refer to Building a Straw Bale House published by Princeton Architectural Press.
