Strawbale in the Interior (Anchorage, Fairbanks: renting, live in, price)

[NorthWord]

Well, it sounds like you've already made up your mind.

My recommendation of high thermal mass was keeping in tune with your "Hobbit house" plan. Small windows don't do much for passive solar gain, so the thermal mass is used to keep the interior warm when your fire dies down. Think masonry heaters. The CES article bears this out, though it couldn've been shorter by saying simply "Earth Ship designs don't work in the Interior". Too much glass.
Oh, don't try to bury your house either (again, Hobbit-style), or you'll become intimately acquainted with the Interior's hidden hazard; Radon. Bring lots of Visqueen plastic either way.

I sounds like your planning on building this house right on the ground. If this is ground is permafrost (which is more likely than not, look for the Black Spruce), then you're simply spinning your wheels. The house needs to be up, at least on a thick gravel pad, to keep the ground cold. If it starts to thaw, your house will sink. Since you don't have dumptruck access for pouring a bunch of gravel, post and pad is your smartest option for permafrost mitigation. The CES has lots of info on this too.

I don't like being a naysayer, but I spend every day with folks who literally drag a sled full of tools into the wilderness and carve out a house. Logs and milled lumber, cut on site. Anything else is an exercise in frustration.

[MissingAll4Seasons]

I'm just in the research phase here, so haven't commited to a construction method yet. So far, I haven't run into any insurmountable obstacles with any of the methods I've researched (log, SIP, straw bale or cob)... just a few things in each that I need to investigate further to see if there is a way to properly work around the problem. I'm not opposed to combining any or all of the methods I'm researching if it gets me the house I want (sturdy, warm, affordbale and aesthetically pleasing). My Hobbit House vision has more to do with the shape and impact of the house rather than the size of the windows... I fully intend to glaze as much of the south face as possible without sacrificing r-value or structural integrity.

Considering damp wicking issues with strawbale, the Radon emmission, and the permosfrost I know is on my property I searched for more info on straw bale or cob buildings on piers. That can be done safely, even in seismic areas, and makes me feel a whole lot better. Concrete stucco (high portland cement content) may not work because it does seem to perform pourly in extreme cold climates; however there are centuries of history in Scotland, Russia and Scandanavia that says a cob mudding followed by lime plaster holds up to extreme cold... any small cracks that might develop in the winter can easily be plastered over again in the summer. If the natives used to build houses from sod, I certainly don't see how mud outer walls wouldn't work. Deep eave overhangs and proper sills on windows & doors seem to be the best bet for keeping straw bale from rotting (exactly the same as wood building).

I think with proper design and construction detailing, straw bale and cob plastering would probably work just fine built around a shell of log posts and roof beams (on site). I'm not done my research, so I might uncover a fatal flaw in one or more methods, but I suspect it will come down to cost and availability of materials.

[klickitt]

There are methods of using straw bales in a slab foundation that insulates the concrete floor. I was never interested in it for our home as it was not a real issue. In the case of permafrost you might want to look into it. It might be the way to go for insulating the ground from the house.

[MissingAll4Seasons]

Yep, you can build straw on concrete if you do the right things... but we can't get a mixer truck back to our property so post and pad (piers) is the way to go for us. Any concrete we'd use would will need to be hand mixed, so we're thinking "small amounts"!

[snkalaska]

Have you looked into cabin kits? There's probably a number of businesses in the area that make cabins and then all you have to do is assemble it on site.

[klickitt]

Do you know if you have permafrost in your location?

IF not then you can do a pole building style. There are some tricks to it, but can be agreat way of building with straw. Use a pole build style for the base and then shape it however you want. Such as your hobbit type dwelling.

[MissingAll4Seasons]

Yes, we've found several businesses that do stick-built and log cabin kits. We've also found a couple that will build your custom house as a kit with SIPs. We prefer SIP to log, and definitely don't want stick, but kits of any type are expensive even if you do most of the work. We have lots of trees and lots of dirt, for free, on the property for building material. So I'm just trying to determine if we can build strawbale less expensively than log (for full on-site construction), and if either would be significantly less expensive than SIP... not just to build, but to maintain and heat long term.

[MissingAll4Seasons]

Originally Posted by klickitt

Do you know if you have permafrost in your location?

IF not then you can do a pole building style. There are some tricks to it, but can be agreat way of building with straw. Use a pole build style for the base and then shape it however you want. Such as your hobbit type dwelling.

Yes, we has, at least, discontinuous permafrost on our. We might find a building site that is clear, but we're not counting on it. If we decide to go this route, we'll likely building an elevated floor on posts and then construct a post & beam inner shell covered by straw bales and mud/plaster (probably round-ish with a reciprocating roof).

[NorthWord]

There are several kit builders here in the interior that specialize in timberframe construction. It's more labor intensive than postnbeam, but they can go either way. They can provide finished beams if your local lumber is not up to task.

You can rent a small mixer at any one of the dozen equipment rental spots in town. A decent four-wheeler can tow it to your property. You'll also need a water source and a generator. If you're near the lake, you can just pump up your water for construction.

There's plenty of resources in Fairbanks for DIYers, and they have no qualms with renting out heavy equipment to anyone with a bank account. Those piers will need to be deep, so consider a post hole auger rental too.
The Fairbanks yellow pages is a good place to start when you get an idea going. They can give you rental quotes to help work out a budget.

There are several cabins still in use in the Fairbanks area that use sod for roofing, though no complete houses exist. The sod isn't structural, it's merely an insulating layer over a rubber membrane. It looks nice. There are several for rent near the intersection of Chena Hot Springs Rd. and the Old Steese Highway (google map it to see). There's a row of them on Swan Rd. They look like gardens from the air.

During the winter, there is NO MOISTURE in the air. Drier than the driest desert even. Mud will quickly turn into dirt, and our dirt isn't that good. Unless there's some significant reinforcing matrix to your cobbing, I fear that your walls may crumble.

Again, I apologize for any perceived negativity towards your ideas. Alaskans have an unwritten obligation to occasionally save visitors from themselves; whether it be a Japanese adventurer intent on walking across the state, or an idealistic kid who wants to rough it in the bush for a summer, you can count on us to step in and tell you if you're going to run into trouble.
We want everyone to come up here and love it. It's not in our nature to let someone come up here and fail - or worse. Except for that Grizzly Man guy. He just had it coming.

[klickitt]

Originally Posted by northword

except for that grizzly man guy. He just had it coming.

rotflmao