Cohousing-L Mailing List: D.I.Y.'s Straw Bale Con. Alert

[Harry Pasternak (Harry_Pasternak]

This note is for folks who are Unpaid Volunteeers who are
developing/designing/building their own neighborhood to enhance their own
"social networking"--this king of neighborhood is sometimes called cohousing
or collaborative housing or cooperative housing; but, can be found in many
middleclass communities all over the western world.

Before anyone even considers straw bale construction-do some research and you
may find you are about to become a guineau pig with higher than normal
construction costs and perhaps more negative environmental impact than
conventional construction.

For a beginning, read Maire O'Neil's comments, in the July 1995 issue of
"Fine Homebuilding", on the book "The Straw Bale House". Some comments from
the article:
* "Some objective post-occupancy evaluations of the projects used as examples
in the book would have been helpful"
* "The authors also failed to make a convincing case for the affordability of
bale building over other means of construction and leave the reader in
considerable doubt on this critical issue. Assertions of affordability
unfortunately seem to be in conflict with the information presented in the
comparison of conventional contractor-built construction with straw-bale
construction. The cost quoted for the two methods are almost identical".
* " The text implies that the substantial work described in the assembly of
the framed openings, ladder trusses, specialized roof plates and post and
beam structures: and the applications of stucco, plaster, trim and finish
work all require less construction skill than in a framed building". 
(Yikes!?---- my comment) See Affordability that follows.
Harry Pasternak
Unpaid Volunteer For D.I.Y.'s Who Need Info On Designing and Building 
Affordable,Frugal Supportive Neighborhoods, Who Works At:
Thousand Islands Institute
The Independent Centre For Housing Research & Education
(Harry_Pasternak [at] tvo.org)

- sent via an evaluation copy of BulkRate (unregistered).