by Athena Swentzell Steen, Bill Steen, David Bainbridge & David Eisenberg
The Straw Bale House shows how to:
- Build your own straw bale house for as little as half the cost of a comparable conventional house.
- Adapt the straw bale construction method to a wide variety of styles, from a dry-climate adobe to a moist-climate European country cottage.
- Retrofit inefficient or aging buildings-such as mobile homes or old barns-with straw bales, and gain insulation values of R-50 or more.
- Use straw bale construction to build a range of different building types, from greenhouses and animal sheds to barns and churches.
About the Authors
Athena Swentzell Steen and Bill Steen live in Canelo, Arizona, and are founders of the Canelo Project, which develops and promotes innovative, community-enhancing approaches to building and living. David Bainbridge is a restoration ecologist at San Diego State University, and is co-author of Village Homes' Solar House Designs. David Eisenberg is a builder with rammed earth, adobe, glass, steel, and concrete who has organized the straw ball wall testing program in Tucson, Arizona.Reviews
An guide to building living structures with straw bales. Covers benefits of building with straw bales, safety concerns, building codes, and insurance, and offers techniques for building walls, windows, doors, foundations, roofs, floors, and plastering the straw walls. Includes b&w photos demonstrating building techniques, and color photos of finished homes and interiors.Booknews
"This is the book we've been waiting for ... a book understandable to homeowners, yet specific enough to make it highly useful to designers and professional builders.
Alex Wilson, Editor, Environmental Building News
The Straw Bale House opens the door to a treasure house of information. Room after room overflows with details that empower the dream of truly low-cost, safe, and energy-efficient homes. Through the windows one can view the entire community working together; In Sonora, Mexico, seventeen women are building homes with their own sweat and with knowledge gained from The Straw Bale House. This book is destined to become the classic reference for straw bale construction.
Thoric N. Cederstrom, Farmer-to-Farmer Program, University of Arizona
Michael Borden, P.O. Box 2197, Fairfield, Iowa 52556 641.472.2157
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