T-minus 3 days until Andreas and I head over to the Kootneys for a strawbale building workshop! I'm secretly so excited as I've always dreamed of being involved in building my own house but never thought it would be true!
We are participating in this workshop to learn more about building with straw and get some hands-on experience as well as connect with other like-minded builders/future home owners. I'm so excited as I've always been envious of boys and how they seem to just "know" how to make things. I think it's a secret right of passage for boys into manhood where someone pulls them aside and says, "Hey boy, it's time you learned how to make something. Then you will be a man."
So envy be gone....I'm learning too!
We will be involved in building a modified-post and beam house that is non-load bearing. We have been doing a lot of pre-reading and I was interested to learn that if the 200 million tons of "waste" straw produced in the United States each year would be baled and used for building, 5 million 2,000 sq.foot houses could be made! This statistic is from 1994 so who knows how much more efficient we've become since then?
Building with straw is a "new-old" idea as it's been practiced in the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia for over 100 years. It seems that the idea is re-emerging on the North American building horizon and I'm happy we'll be part of it's emergence. Sustainably speaking building with straw decreases the amount of cement used (major CO2 polluter), reduces pressure on our timber resources, provides "breathable" walls for higher quality indoor air, uses passive solar techniques thus drastically reducing the heating and cooling capacity needed and most of all, uses a sustainably produced "waste" material (the straw itself).
So, needless to say, I'm excited! Stay posted for more updates and photos.
