CHANGED OUR MIND… Touring a STRAW BALE HOUSE 

My brother-in-law built a rather lg straw bale house in West Va and he has never had the plaster crack and, being an artist, he has paintings hanging on the walls every where. Also, it was a big beautiful and airy space.

Hello from Ukraine. I like it. My grandma leaves in a straw house, but it's made with a different technique. He and grandpa build it from straw mixed with red clay and lime, formed in blocks in wooden forms and dried by the sun. After it builds from blocks as a regular house and is covered with a thing we called a "набриск" which is essentially just foamed cement when you mix concrete and kind of splash it on the wall with a brush or special instrument. As result, you got a layer of cement that gave a kind of good insulation and strength properties.

With any natural building methods, "a good hat and boots" is required. This means a roof with appropriate eaves and a foundation that manages water. If you live in a temperate rain forest, add good coat to the list (maritime Pac NW, small pockets of Appalachia for North America). Remember the building needs to breath, so be very careful with cement usage. Put in picture rails like old plaster walls. Bottle walls are made from two with the top taken off and butted together.

Straw bale homes are also fire proof. The bales are covered in plaster but they are also very compressed so airtight. They don't burn if they are built correctly.

When I was 10, I spent the night a few times at a friend's strawbale home in the mountains of Northern California. It was left unfinished (straw showing) in the upstairs loft, which was my friends room. It had big windows with oak and pine trees just outside. It felt like being in a tree house, and I absolutely fell in love with her home. Someday, I would love to live in one. They are pretty special!

We have a straw bale home in our neighborhood. It's pretty badass. It was built in the 80s and is in better shape than most homes built in the 90s around here. But it's dry dry dry out here. The coolest part of the house is that every window has a big window seat!

We've recently build a little strawbale cabin up in the woods here in Estonia. They are really not that difficult to build, and I love working with the earthen plasters! Big windows on the south side really warms up the space quickly, especially in spring and autumn :) I hope you will go for it :)

If y'all do another video on housing could you please talk about how each of them hold up to different types of weather? Rain, wind, tornados, freezes etc. Thanks!!! I am loving this journey!

I keep telling you straw bale with lime wash. I would keep the rest as timber frame, wood heat, septic, water catchment. passive solar and solar panel with battery. I don't want compost toilets, but the heated floors sound great! You can plan ahead and put a wall hanging system in place by using an old fashion picture rail in the plaster.

🔆Built a Strawbale in 1997 in western Canada. The workshop that your father-in-law took seemed to progress real slow. Doing a workshop is the way to go to get it built. We had about 10 ppl come and our Nebraska style 900 sq ft (outside measurement) 1 bedrm went up over a 2 day weekend. Got a couple trusses up but weather and time didn’t allow completion. A follow up weekend to do roof and start plaster would have been good. It’ll probably last a century, a yurt won’t. ❤ with plaster and adobe, ➡️ look into spraying it on‼️ goes much faster❗️

I am SO happy you guys did this field trip!! I hope you do a straw house and show us all the build! A straw home has been a dream of mine for a few years.

With the silver insulation layer its quite comfortable in our 30 ft yurt. Sometimes too hot, so we burb it by opening the top. We heat with our wood stove primarily, but have a propane furnace as a backup in the basement. Only yurt I've ever seen with basement, and I love it! We are in Vermont, so winters are real.

With your crew, did you consider linking multiple yurts or multiple straw bale structures together? Re: the water, using solar to pump water uphill then use the stored energy to provide water under pressure to the homestead is a great idea.

The straw bale idea is super interesting! I’m used to building things SOLID, so it might take me awhile to warm up to it 😏 Totally cool what they’re doing there though. It’s so encouraging to get off your own homestead and see somebody else doin cool stuff.. it can feel pretty lonely sometimes!

You could sorta do what the fit farmer is doing but have a straw house and a yurt and connect them… like one being the kitchen/ living space and the other bedrooms

OMGOODNESS!!! This was perfect! This is my vision also 🙂, I am in central PA. I may need to make the 3.5 hour drive to tour that farm. 😎 So glad you took us with you on your tour. 🥰

You should also look at compressed straw wall panels they are pretty sweet.

We built by ourselves a geodesic dome house using a prefab kit house from Natural Spaces Domes. If you like the yurt feel but want the straw bale house functionality, I’d check out the geodesic domes.

Quiet Creek Herb Farm is one of my favorite places! When the gardens are green and blooming it’s such an inviting experience. So many things to see and learn. My daughters have done short apprenticeships there and my oldest got engaged there. Rusty and Claire are wonderful teachers and have a nice family. I love seeing this tour!

I had to ask my husband to double check, but yeah, he said straw-bale, no contest. I LOVE a round shaped home, there's something nesty and cozy about a round shaped home, but the efficiency of a straw-bale wins every time.

I’ve always loved straw bale homes! Can’t wait to see what y’all choose!

Love the idea and tried (and failed) doing it myself. I just want to encourage you it can be done- but please keep in mind that it's not for the faint of heart especially if you're on a time constraint. You don't have to be super idealistic while building your homestead on raw land. You've got a LOT of work ahead of you, regardless, and you probably don't need a big brand new project that you're not used to, WHILE attending to a full homestead. You'll need a team if ppl. And make sure there's no mold!

I have a friend lives in one and it's great in both winter and summer. It's a reasonably easy build too. You already have the advantage of being familiar with the product and handling it. Good luck 🤞

On thing that popped in my head with the beautiful window wells is that you could easily have house plants and/or have an indoor garden such as greens, maybe radishes... This is very interesting watching how you're making informed decisions.

Tiny Shiny home is building an earthbag home. They have an office and chicken garden done so far. They literally are using the dirt off their land. Jonathan & Ashley are so awesome and their kids are so talented. They have videos showing how it is done.

I just LOVE this video and your recent videos. Warms my heart. I'm just way too old to begin again, so I'll keep my little house and garden and chickens and pets. But when I was young, 19, I lived in a log cabin near timberline in the Colorado Rockies - no electricity, just a pot bellied stove, burning wood and coal. Solar panels were not an option back then. My pioneer life. Until I got enamored of the sea and became an electrician on a ship. I always wanted to build an adobe house. Similar to a straw bale house, thick walls, but more clay. What you're doing is just wonderful and fascinating to me. - Granny Bess

I built a complete two story strawbale home facing south on the northshore of MN. South wall was conventional SIPs with many windows for passive solar. Back three walls were strawbale. Turned out well, but Spring thaw needs the windows open. Vapor barrier, vapor barrier, vapor barrier. Know your concepts. It turned out great but was not faster or even that much cheaper. I would do 2x10 walls conventional on my next dreamhouse. Still get the deep walls and window wells AND... the life will be longer. Make sure that you don't have a time of the year where prevailing storms hit with vertical rain/snow. Put in a majorly good air exchanger. It was beautiful living there for 8 years. East wall got nailed with Nor-east storms. Mine was a timberframe infill on the back three walls. Timberframe was the most fun/rewarding part of this. I would highly suggest that you don't do floating window bucks. Make sure that each window buck has framing down to the slab for support. Use Vycar tape around all bucks- this is a major vapor area. Enjoy.

If you were to build a simple pole barn house, with radiant barrier sheet insulation under the metal, and a wood truss roof, a professional crew (Amish or Mennonite preferably) could probably have the building closed in in less than a week. Then you could take your time and save money by finishing the inside yourself. The final insulation and wall coverings internally could be determined even after the structure was put up. To me this would be the speediest and most cost saving approach.

Seeing as you will be up on a large hill, I think wind power would definitely be something to look into. You also have a lot of gravel on your place. Maybe screen it to get the larger pieces out and use it in your floor mix. Do you have any outcroppings of rock to use for the foundation?

We looked into that style. We are settling on cordwood construction. Don’t know if you’ve heard of that style but it’s super cool

beautiful..very clever idea heated floor for extreme cold

Loving this series. Keep um coming plz.

I think it’s unique. With these housing prices there will be all kinds of creative builds. Next year we want to build a small earth home. Like a hobbit hole 😊❤

If you wanted more about yurts, the you tuber the fit farmer lives in a yurt, and has for years. I think a yurt would be faster for you all, but the straw bail house would take a long time to build. Nancy from nebraska

you guys need to go visit The FIt Farmer, their family of 5 or 6 live in a yurt they put up walls and make bedrooms and so on !!

thanks that was great tour. i think the speed of building is most attractive!

What about a straw bale yurt? I too have always dreamed of a Yurt, and a Straw Bale... I would love to combine the two. Yurt frame, and instead of canvas, fill out the walls with straw bale. With straw bale you can shape it any way you like. Best of both worlds.

We live in central pa and live in a straw built home. We love it!

Also look at the “earthship homes”, since you guys have a lot of clay it might work, you can use the durable earth flooring and the bottle wall, has a greenhouse attached to the house, you use same water four times (washing, watering plants in greenhouse, flushing toilet, watering shrubs), you can attach solar power and rain catching system. You will be able to find a lot of videos about these homes on RU-vid.

We stayed in a yurt once with our children on vacation and I was so un- prepared for the noise! You can hear everything from every "corner". So I would think some insulation would be a must if my husband ever brought up his yurt dream again!

huge fan, I never realized how local you guys were. I've been to quiet creek and had a pizza cooked on their pizza oven behind there house.

I was searching strawbale construction and your channel popped up. I'm glad I found it, and loved this video. I'm checking out more.

Very interesting thank you for sharing

Pole barn home with closed cell spray foam last way way longer and 0 maintenance easy to heat even with just a simple wood burner.

I got the okay to build me a cob house on one of my sister's plots in Spain. Looking forward to it. Love how you are all so surprised by the beauty. Since 1998 i've been doing vintage interiors and one thing i learned, when people saw it on picture way back then... they thought " hmm.. looks nice but it wouldn't be my kinda thing" When the same people would visit it and 'experience' such interior.. their jaws dropped to the floor.. lol. Interiors equal experience....

I've always wanted a straw bale house! Go for it.

Never seen this before 😳 amazing!

Both of the houses were so cool

That’s a good idea! Straw build like a yurt.

GREAT VIDEO.

straw bale houses insulate very well. The only thing I would caution you about, coming from a pest control perspective... if you live in an area which is prone to termites, they can wreak havoc on a straw bale house. If you are in such an area and still want to proceed with a straw bale home, I would suggest either getting the ground treated before you build, or if you would prefer a more natural approach, you could see if any local pest companies offer a Borate treatment. Water + Borate minerals will help act as a fire retardant, it helps against mold and fungus, and its toxic to termites if they eat cellulose material which has absorbed it.

I live in a Strawbale home there warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

Oh wow now I want a bale house!!!

Also, DID YOU NOTICE THE SMELL?!?!? The sweet, earthy smell of that straw-bale? It's irresistible. I freaking love it.

A straw bail home is a good fit for you guys!

Said you are not super handy but I guarantee you after all is said and done you will not feel that way about yourself anymore. Always learning and loving it myself.

Yay I love strawbale houses! I would want shou sugi ban wood panel on the outside I think. Because I am lazy and sweden is rainy. :)

Honestly, my guess is that you would be much better off with a straw-bale house than a prebuilt shed/house as those are just not sturdy enough over time to hold up to the wear and tear of a large family.

We are going to be doing a straw bale home up in Maine!

LOL you guys crack me up every time "we're hippies!"

I was really sold on strawbale until I toured a few decade old homes and the mold knocked me right out. In a dry climate they would work but with regular 80% humidity where we are building they lost the confidence for us. I am debating on doing cob perhaps cord wood.

There are some great strawbale books. can also be 2 story . Planned to do this but neuromuscular disease hit so pivoted to restoring hundred year old house rather than being out in country. Learn lots but be ok with life pivots

Check out the RU-vid channel called The Little Homestead. They built 5 or 6 dirt homes. (Well one main and 4-5 out building/bedroom and bathrooms. NOW they're putting two old sheds together and making it one huge garage by connecting it with dirt walls. They incorporate the bottles, and those 5 gallon water jugs, tires, all kinds of trinkets into the walls. They also built a dragon fireplace (I think It's a dragon) and one bedroom has a lower loft. They put trees in their houses like that yurt had. All kinds of crazy stuff. I think you'd like it

Earthen floors are great, we love ours! 🌞🏜️

How about a yurt as the center a few kitchen living room and straw bail bedrooms around the outside like a star only square rooms instead of pointed. The walls around the out side of the yurt would become the insolation for the yurt walls and the bedrooms would be insolated by the straw bails just a thought. Good luck

Local apple orchard has a store front and the building was made with straw bale and it's warm

Love your work, gotta ask does anyone out there know of any homestead stuff in Wyo? We get some crazy weather here so I've been curious about what less expensive materials would stand against it.

Very interesting! Never heard of the Straw bale building. Have you thought about EarthBag building? It could be the way to get your Yurt shape! The channel My Little Homestead , does a lot of earth-bag building. Can’t wait 5o see what you end up building with. How is the pond doing? Is it filling?

It depends on the company you get your yurt from as well, the one I am getting my yurt from once I have the land…works with the people of Mongolia who make yurts the traditional way. Groovy Yurts then takes the Mongolian Yurts and sells them world wide with part of the sales going back to the craftspeople in Mongolia…. Mongolia’s climate is much like Northern Canada, but theirs is a dry cold while ours is a wet cold….

I really like the idea of straw bale home with clay walls and floors. What is the formula that they use for the clay? Also will the straw walls decompose over time? What is the process for fixing that? I think I am going to have to research this more. Lol

We had one in our neighborhood and when they took it down it had to be haul to a hazardous waste dumpsite. It cost a fortune to remove it but they got the land alot cheaper because of it.

Straw bail house first I heard of it. Interesting. Your son wanted the large space. With a straw bail home you could design it anyway you want just have the heated floor for winter.

I would build a double yurt with a passageway/entry/ mud room between the yurts. One yurt for bedrooms and the other for living room and kitchen and storage

Amazing farmstead. Thanks for the tour. I love the idea of building a straw bale house for so many reasons. However after seeing some serious cracking to the one in this video, inside and out, I would be concerned about that risk. Can anyone comment on what went wrong to make that happen and how to avoid it?

Fire and mold are the biggest issues with straw bales homes..oh and that you don't just use straw bales from the local farm supply store. Straw bales for home building are very expensive.

Have you looked at cordwood building. It's awesome.

I think you should do it, it would be amazing

Sorry, didn't think that comment through. Straw bale homes are good if you live in a dry region, but if ANY humidity gets inside, it can rot from the inside...think, settling. Packed earth does not have the same problem. Every pro has a con. Straw bales are quickly and easily stacked. Packed earth takes more effort, but has a better chance of lasting longer. Well, best wishes to all the builders out there!!

Stockade style log homes are pretty easy to make.

Fit Farmer lives in a Yurt year round. Try emailing them maybe. Good luck and Blessings !!!

Should look at My Little Homestead. They have their homestead buildings made from earth bags.

A round straw bale house and a air bnb (adult retreat) yurt overlooking the pond ;)

My Hall is to be built with straw bales. I will, of course, need rafters to hang things from ;).

Combine feel of yurt with straw bale construction by doing a round straw bale house!

I think a person can seal those clay floors with linseed oil that will help with cleaning and also look nice.

Type High Sierra Permaculture yurt into the RU-vid search. It's a video by Living Big in a Tiny House. It's the guy who runs the permaculture course I'm doing so when I saw it I really paid attention, and they did a beautiful job with it. They added a wing onto the yurt for bedrooms etc so it was actually really spacious. They lived in it with one kid, not 6, but maybe it will give you an idea that will bring all these things you love together. Perhaps a yurt living space/kitchen, and then a metal framed straw bale bedroom wing (or a kids wing and a parents wing). Or the opposite and have the warm, well insulated straw bale living space and a couple of yurt bedroom wings. If the doorways don't match up well enough to butt them together, you could do covered walkways to join them with lots of windows so you have a view, but also then line the sides with gardens so in winter you can grow some herbs and veg in your "greenhouse walkways". Of course then there's the option of a metal framed straw bale barn home... Or... to throw something else into the mix, when my parents were looking to build, one of the display homes we looked at was an octagon. It was gorgeous. They ended up building something else, but the octagon was way up on their list. Surely you could build a straw bale octagon. Maybe even put a yurt style roof on it, but with some hidden insulation. I've seen another octagon too. That was incredible. The guy was such a craftsman and did it all himself. That was on Grand Designs. I looked it up to get the episode number for you and fancy that, it was oak and... straw bales! S09E09. Seeing all the things you said you loved in those places, the bottle walls, the deep windows, the clay floors, the quirky, hippy stuff, I'm really glad you're rethinking it now because you won't love a metal box. It would be like me living in a house where everything is white and grey. I wouldn't feel at home. I need colour. But if I buy a house that's all white, I can paint a few walls and add some cushions and curtains and voila, colourful. A metal box is much harder to hippify (I'm declaring that a word!) after it's built. You need to plan how to do it from the start. I really do love those deep windows the straw bales create. You could build a mini bookshelf into them and each kid could decorate one to their taste. Then when you need some quiet, instead of sending them to their rooms you could send them to their windows to read 😁 I was a total bookworm as a kid. I would have loved my own reading nook like that. Instead I climbed to the very top branches of the tree in our front yard, higher than the house, and would sit up there with a book for hours. If they ever couldn't find me, the tree was the first place they checked 😂 Wasn't great for windy or rainy days though! Oooh, another thought. Earthbags. Lots of earthbag round houses out there. And square ones. Cheap to build. Almost a yurt but insulated. If you use earthbags alone they can only be fairly small, but if you have a frame you can go bigger. Would use all the non clay soil that you dug out of the pond too.

I think you were at eshs the other video now your in brookville.. you are a lot closer than I realized 😂

Watch the" Fit Farmer". He and his family lives in a Yurt. Also they bought another because family was getting bigger.

Now I really want to do a straw bale home! Im sure the VA loan wouldn't approve of it though..... :/

I really like the idea of a stawbale home. I've seen a couple (now with a baby) on RU-vid who live in a yurt off grid in Canada. They (obviously) have insulation inside theirs. It must be warm in the winter, because she's always barefoot. Their channel is called Off Grid w/Jake & Nicolle.

I wouldn't be surprised if the owners are Waldorf alumni. This screams anthropology...

Study> strawbale, earthbag, cob houses etc. They can be 2 story houses. The oldest cob house currently standing is 10,00 years old. Earthen houses are built to last. Just remember the saying > 'all cob needs is a good hat (roof) and a good pair of boots (foundation). Roofs should over hang more then modern houses have. It helps protect outer walls. Foundation needs protection from water splashing upward hard, many have rock protecting lower outside walls. The interior rooms can be normal modern drywall if not incontact with earthwalls. There is so many possibilities in design, materials. Read up on Roman concrete - some of those ancient buildings still stand. Read on aircrete > Unlike traditional cinder blocks or concrete bricks, which have a high cost, heavy weight and are not ideal to make yourself or build a home with yourself. AirCrete blocks extend your concrete by a very large margin, reducing cost, making blocks lightweight, easy to work with and allowing DIY home possible. Think combo roman aircrete for some aplications.

Uh-oh…I think we’re hippies…😂😂

Enjoying your journey looking for a way to become farmers 1940's style vs 1980's fertilizer and pesticide administrators. Your article about milk allergy has lead me to completely ban it from my diet. Best week in several months! Fingers still crossed! Thanks! I live in a mountain valley where -20f and snow on the ground for 5 months is normal. The crops are potatoes, wheat and oats, cows and moose. Fully permitted straw bale construction is approved, with about 10 examples to observe. My observations. Every house in the valley is fundamentally ill conceived whether it be a 6 million dollar trophy "cabin" or a small straw bale home. Straw bale homes are actually post and beam construction with an infill of straw bale insulation. No real cost savings vs SIP panels or stud wall plus blown foam. Density and hence mass energy storage are not markedly different. Advantages: -Thick walls are aesthetically pleasing. --If natural plaster is used the proper balance between a wall that breathes and one that can be heated can be achieved. Never wrap your house with House Wrap! Disadvantages: -- More labor intensive --professional contractors from framing to plumbing and electrical will charge more than stick framing because their crews have to be re trained for different processes. ---You are still faced with the same major costs of a conventional foundation, heating and air conditioning, appliances, interior finishes, and plumbing which is the biggest bite of the apple. -- And the mice will win! They always do! ---In terms of heating and cooling performance a stray bale house is no different than a foam/fiberglass structure if it has the same R value. And it will have markedly more restricted resale customers and value. The straw bale house and the stick built McMansion are equally flawed because they ignore the Anasazi respect for mass temperature storage and solar optimization. Build a conventional American home with an R 19 rated wall system, and alongside of it one with an equal R rating but thick mass walls and 70% of the glass in an engineered SE exposure. Open the doors of both when its Zero F outside and come back 8 hours later. The conventional or straw bale house will be 30 degrees or less. The mass wall building will be closer to 60 degrees. Mike Reynolds got it mainly right with his Earthship designs. Perhaps his fascination with sustainability led him to chase the last 15% of perfection rather than focus upon universality. If you have a dozen friends willing to pound dirt into tires, by all means go full Earthship. If not, use concrete, cinder block, massive logs, or even steel to incorporate the vision into your Sunny Mountain. Cover it with earth and wildflowers! My home ranch in the Oregon Cascades burned to the ground along an with old growth forest that had stood for 400 years. If you live in the West in the woods you have to be crazy to build anything but a fully earth sheltered home. Look up The Natural Home website for an example of similar performance with different materials and esthetic.

Question about strawbale - Condensation from temperature changes and inside/outside temp difference. I’m in Maine, so we see drastic temp differences between outside and inside in the winter. I can’t seem to comprehend how that doesn’t cause condensation within the straw bales.

What keeps it from drawing moisture and the straw gets mouldy?

Being in Ontario, I’m really curious about how straw bale works in Pennsylvania (same climate, more or less).

If going with a strawbale home go with flax straw as it doesn't go moldy if it gets wet.

While the straw bale is nice, my concerns over any issues with the walls should they get compromised by rodents/mold/fire, etc. combined with the fact that if I'm going to have walls that look like that, I may as well go the Cob/Earthship route and take away those chances, while small, of the straw having an issue, would be a nightmare to deal with if it happened. Natural floors are great, and with the wonderful natural sealants you can get nowadays pretty sure you'll love it, just put in a CLIMATE BATTERY when youre setting it up, will work great along with radiant heating. A lot comes down to how much firewood you want to manage, an outdoor burner like that with hydronic floor heat is nice, but lots of wood, vs say a Kachel oven inside and 1-2 small fires a day, or some rocket mass heater stoves that use 1/10th the wood of a reg wood stove. Combined with taking advantage of passive solar, you'll be plenty warm. Composting toilets are great if it will save you having to do the septic field, IDK if ur county, etc. will make you put one in anyway or not. Solar pumps are good, also ram pumps are nice too, however the best thing is to store the water high up on your property so you only need gravity to being with to bring it down to your fields. Also the more earthworks you can do with swales on contour to soak, slow, and spread the moisture out over the property and the year, will help lessen the need for water, too. Glad to see the honest take on yurts, they're ok for outbuildings, yoga/meditation hut, etc in the 3 seasons, but would not be great to go through a winter in the Northeast vs the pacific northwests much milder winters.

My goats would love this house