Brian Waite has developed and built a very interesting new design for a strawbale home. It is particularly suited to people who want to build their own energy efficient and sustainable homes.
Highlights
Brian's design uses strawbales for insulation.
The supporting structure for the strawbales consists of a number of prebuilt arches.
The arches are spaced at the length of a strawbale so that strawbales can be stacked from the floor to the top of the arch in one continuous stack.
The strength of the arches makes internal load bearing walls unnecessary and leaves the internal wall arrangement open to whatever you like and open to easy change over time. A unique bale retaining system prevents settling of bales over time.
The design lends itself to owner built homes -- Brian built the home by himself including the placement of all the arches and strawbales with only the assistance of an inexpensive hand winch.
The design also includes a passive system vent system that reduces the moisture levels in the bales that are less than half of the usual levels -- important for this damp UK climate.
Quad Glazed windows
The house also uses a unique design quadruple glazed window that is made by combining two conventional double glazed glass units.
Picture above shows one of the quad glazed windows. It seems to me that this kind of window might achieve something like US R6 and be relatively easy and relatively inexpensive for owner built homes.
The house has many other interesting features and design details -- see the Full Details links just below for more.
