Friday, October 14, 2016

Starting The Straw Bale House

I would like to point out right off the bat that I am not, nor claim to be a writer, this blog is just a diary of our build so that people can either learn from our mistakes or from our genius ideas.

This is the house plan I designed, it only took me 3 years and about eight other plans I designed to finally decide on this one. It is a simple house design for our first straw bale construction and has everything we need. The exterior foot print is 32' X 52', the interior square footage is about 1380.


Alrighty, we are finally starting the foundation!
Of course we have been working long hours before this day, like getting our house plan done and pricing everything out, but today was the first day we spent our money. Today we bought the rebar and fill dirt for our foundation.



It was actually a lot of back and forth deciding on what kind of structure we wanted to build, first straw bale, then earth bag, back to straw bale, then the complete block system, a freaking manufactured home because I am so sick of this RV, now back to straw bale. I am so glad I didn't take the easy way out, manufactured homes are just not energy efficient enough to eventually go completely solar, but that adventure will be for a whole new blog I imagine. 

I will try to keep up with this blog, but like I said before, I am not a writer and on top of that, I have a fairly short attention span. Let's all cross our fingers that I stay on track and see this through.


 

8 comments:

  1. Good luck with your building process. Hopefully, TX weather will be much more cooperative than NE Wisconsin's weather so you have a better experience than we've had!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you Gwen. So far, since the concrete was poured, we have had rain every day.

      Delete
  2. Can you share more about the insulated pantry? Will it be vented to the outside? Why is the freezer outside the pantry and not inside?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. HI April,
      The pantry will not be vented to the outside. We will vent it back inside the house. The reason we did not put the freezer inside the pantry has to do with the heat that the freezer will produce. We want to keep the pantry at a cool temperature and excess heat from the freezer would not help.

      Delete
  3. Replies
    1. Hi Patrick,
      Thanks for asking. We have been completely rained out for a while, and then there was the Thanksgiving holiday week that we didn't work on the house. Today we built door bucks and started the window bucks. I am starting a new post this evening.

      Delete
  4. Thank you for doing this blog. Lack of step by step guide or a building journal is something that discourages people in deciding to build such a home.
    I hope in a couple of years, when you are already settled in your new home, I will do the same like you and share my building story.

    Thank you and good luck!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks! I'm going to do more updating soon. I hope you are following so you get notified when I post.

    ReplyDelete