Strawbale in the Interior (Fairbanks, Bethel: buyers, inspections, to live in)

[MissingAll4Seasons]

Originally Posted by snkalaska

The only drawback is you'll attract extremely large bees.

ROFL!! That's priceless But it does give me some ideas about building my beehives so they can overwinter!

[NorthWord]

Missing,
I had to catch this one for you. Cobwood masonry does NOT work well up here. It has been tried a few times, and there is a "hobbit house" off of Farmer's Loop Rd, but I had asked a builder friend about it and he said that it's falling apart.
There's another one or two in Ester.

The logs radiate heat longitudinally, that is, from outside to inside and vice versa. Plus they rot where they contact the masonry. After a year, a similar structure "looked like swiss cheese." It was subsequently torn down and rebuilt from log.

I thought that it was a neat idea, as it's fast to build and has a nice organic look to it. However, builders' first hand experiences with it were sobering.
It might be nice to use your cutoffs for cobwood masonry "fencing" and low exterior walls though.

[MissingAll4Seasons]

Hmm, I wonder if the cobwood failure was due to species of wood, composition of mortar, or some building mistake (deck backsplash, poor drainage, improper eaving, etc). I know that logs do "breathe" along the grain, and this can be a problem for retaining heat and controlling moisture if not done properly (same goes for all wood houses though).

There are a few cobwood homes in the Yukon (around Whitehorse I think) that are doing fine, so I wonder if they've done something special to make it work in extreme cold?

I think using cobwood walls (like the rock walls in New England) would be a good way to mark out some of our permanent land divisions if nothing else.

[MissingAll4Seasons]

Yippee - good news! Just got done talking with an engineer I met in college. He says that round is definitely the strongest structural shape for vertical and transverse load, and cone-shaped roofs out-perform any flat roof as far as load capacity. He also said round shaped homes can handle seismic and wind shear forces better than squares because there are no corners and the motion/force can diffuse easier throughout the entire structure rather than being focused on a single point. He's even graciously volunteered to do some load and span calculations on the reciprocal roof design as his spare time allows since he has all the nifty software to calculate those sorts of things. He doesn't have a lot of spare time, so we'll see if we get more info before I need to make a decision

Hubby is great with math (me, not so much), so I figure between the two of them we'll end up with a pretty decent engineering plan. I will, of course, have a licensed structural engineer with Alaskan experience double and triple check everything before (or if) we decide to go this route.

[NorthWord]

Resurrected:
There's an article about an interior strawbuild in this month's Ester Republic (you should be able to find the paper online), they can send you a digital copy of the article.

It's worth reading to the end. There are photos, and I'm sure that you could contact the builders directly.
I do not know any of the folks involved, or where the house is located though.

I have a hard copy of the paper, if you're having trouble seeing the article, I could mail it down to you.

[MissingAll4Seasons]

Thanks NorthWord! I've contacted the editor and hopefully they'll send me the PDF without charging me for the full year subscription -- although $20 is worth it to get more info on this topic

[snozz]

My wife and I built a strawbale cabin off Farmer's Loop in 1999 (near Stuffed Animal Man - anyone remember him?). It's close to Jose and Helena's (from the ER article) and there is a third SB building in that neighborhood as well. Ours is 20 x 20 (inside) on steel I-beams set off the ground on cribs of rail road ties. Over about 3 years, one corner settled 6" lower than than the highest. I have since re-levelled twice (but there are only four points to shim so it's pretty easy). Posts carry the load of the ceiling. The drywall and the exterior lap siding are set off from the bales and connected to 1x4 furring strips, which resulted in large enough chambers on the outsides of the bale wall for convection cells to develop. We were losing a lot of heat until we mitigated with hours of stuffing from the outside and sealing off the top of the wall section with blown celluose. But after living in it and having had three renters in it, we believe that it is warmer than most cabins in the area (plus it has a wood stove AND a monitor, a climbing wall in the loft, and a composting toilet.) I don't know about the 'Black Slime' that's mentioned in the prelude to Jose's piece, and I don't know if I would recommend SB for a really serious house, but we were grad students on a severe budget and willing to take a chance. It was great fun and completely worth the effort.

[NorthWord]

Interesting. There's more of these than I had originally thought.
Were they all built around the same time?

I wonder if the technique has gone the way of the Dome Home in the interior.

[MissingAll4Seasons]

Originally Posted by snozz

My wife and I built a strawbale cabin off Farmer's Loop in 1999 (near Stuffed Animal Man - anyone remember him?). It's close to Jose and Helena's (from the ER article) and there is a third SB building in that neighborhood as well. Ours is 20 x 20 (inside) on steel I-beams set off the ground on cribs of rail road ties. Over about 3 years, one corner settled 6" lower than than the highest. I have since re-levelled twice (but there are only four points to shim so it's pretty easy). Posts carry the load of the ceiling. The drywall and the exterior lap siding are set off from the bales and connected to 1x4 furring strips, which resulted in large enough chambers on the outsides of the bale wall for convection cells to develop. We were losing a lot of heat until we mitigated with hours of stuffing from the outside and sealing off the top of the wall section with blown celluose. But after living in it and having had three renters in it, we believe that it is warmer than most cabins in the area (plus it has a wood stove AND a monitor, a climbing wall in the loft, and a composting toilet.) I don't know about the 'Black Slime' that's mentioned in the prelude to Jose's piece, and I don't know if I would recommend SB for a really serious house, but we were grad students on a severe budget and willing to take a chance. It was great fun and completely worth the effort.

Wow, you only have 4 piers supporting your structure! I think we might be over-engineering ours LOL!

Did you wrap your bales with plastic, or did you allow them to breathe? I've been getting conflicting info about the vapor barrier and housewrap that is recommended for building up there. I know that Jose and Helen meticulously wrapped theirs inside and out, but all the strawbale pros say that could actually cause your bales to rot by trapping moisture in the bales and it's better to plaster them really well instead. I just don't know if the Interior has a long enough drying cycle to compensate for any vapor permeation through the wall during the cold season.

Do you think you would have run into the same convection and heat loss problems if you had plastered the walls rather than using lap and drywall on furring strips?

What do you mean by "serious house"? One that's supposed to last under constant use, or a big fancy one?

[MissingAll4Seasons]

Originally Posted by NorthWord

Interesting. There's more of these than I had originally thought.
Were they all built around the same time?

I wonder if the technique has gone the way of the Dome Home in the interior.

From what I can tell, there were several built in the late 90's to current. So maybe the technique just hasn't caught on with the mainstream yet. I also think people are reluctant to build with "alternative" methods, especially in extreme climates. Building codes also don't really cover alternative materials very well, so it's hard to get permits a lot of the time. Plus a lot of recommendations and requirements for conventional buildings can actually be detrimental to an alternative house (like vapor barriers and housewrap in SB).

Plus, it's just plain easier to build a stick frame box because those materials are readily available and lots of people know how to use them. Same, I suspect, is the case with log cabins. I think that may have been the Dome Home's downfall... it's a bit tricky building round/radial when all the information you find is for squares. Squares with shed or gable roofs are a bit easier to build, but they aren't as structurally sound as rounds with domed, coned or hip roofs. We're finding that the load math is entirely different for our round house, and we really had to dig around for the engineering protocols. I don't think most people are willing to futz with something like that when they have a 100 day building period and a limited budget.