Building A House Of Straw -- Century-Old Construction Technique Is Finding Home In Washington

MOSSYROCK, Lewis County - Joe and Sona Markholt have heard all the "three little pigs" jokes, thank you. But they went ahead and built their barn of straw anyway.

"Everybody's first reaction was, `What? You guys are crazy!' " said Sona Markholt, who plans to raise organically fed chickens in her new straw barn.

Thrifty farmers built the first straw-bale houses on the treeless Nebraska plains in the 1890s. A hundred years later, stuccoed straw-bale haciendas have become trendy in the Southwest.

ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY

Enthusiasts say stucco-covered straw-bale houses are quiet, cool, economical, self-insulating and environmentally friendly.

But the style has only lately found a foothold in the Northwest, mainly among people who like the idea of building without a lot of wood.

"Wood is a wonderful material, and we're still going to use it," said Ted Butchart, a 44-year-old Olympia contractor who organized the barn-raising. "But we don't have much good wood left."

Butchart and Seattle environmentalist Peggy Robinson formed the Greenfire Institute to promote straw-bale construction. So far, said Robinson, there are only about six straw-bale structures in the state, all outbuildings.

"But by the end of the summer, we think there will be 30 to 40, and in another year there could be as many as 200," she said. "It's growing that fast."

COMMUNITY BARN RAISING

A crew of about 20, including friends and neighbors, threw up the walls of the Markholts' new barn near Mayfield Lake in a few hours one weekend last month, stacking the 65-pound bales of tightly pressed wheat straw like bricks.

"This kind of construction really lends itself to community work," said Butchart. "If I fix a big pot of spaghetti, get a half a case of beer and get all my friends out, we can put up the walls and roof trusses on a modest-sized house in a weekend."

When covered with stucco, the straw bales will give the barn an insulating factor of about R-45, compared to the state standard for houses of R-19.

"That's where you get your money back, is in heating savings," said Joe Markholt, who estimates he'll spend about $11,000 on the barn - about the same as he would have for standard construction.

While half-million-dollar straw-built mansions are no longer uncommon in sunbelt states like New Mexico and Arizona, most of the structures built in Washington have been outbuildings - a workshop near Port Townsend, an artist's studio in the Methow Valley, a barn in Kitsap County. But Butchart says he has designed or helped design at least six full-scale houses.

BUILDERS MAY FACE A FEW HURDLES

Straw-bale construction is legal under state building codes, Butchart noted, and local building inspectors are getting used to the idea.

"It no longer strikes them as off the wall," he said. "The code has provisions for alternative materials. You need an architect's seal or an engineer's stamp. If you give them that, most counties are satisfied."

Dan Thomason, plans examiner for Okanogan County, has approved two straw-bale structures, although neither were for habitation. "We're handling them very carefully," he said. "We want to make certain all the safety requirements are met." But beyond that, "it's a viable method of construction, as far as I'm concerned."

King County has approved no straw-bale structures so far. "We've had several inquiries, but the proposals we have seen so far do not comply with the building code," said Tom McDonald, manager of the King County Building Services Division.

Chris Ricketts, acting supervisor of the county's Plans Review section, said planners have some concerns about the long-term durability of straw-bale construction in an area as wet as Puget Sound.

"Much of the work done on this type of construction has been in the Southwest, where the weather is warm and dry," he said. "They don't have the moist, humid climate we have up here."

Anyone who wants to build a straw-bale house in King County should be prepared to "face a lot of hurdles as far as convincing us this is viable construction," Ricketts said.

Butchart contends that weather should not really be a problem.

"I tell people to build a big overhang, keep it off the ground, maybe put one layer of tarpaper beneath the first row. That should do it. There's a straw-bale shed in Tonasket (Okanogan County) that's stood 11 years, and it's not even stuccoed."

Christina Baldwin, a Whidbey Island author, may become the first person in Washington to actually live in a straw-built house. She's planning to build one this summer.

"I have been looking for a house that would be affordable," she said. "But I also wanted to make a statement about how we can do this without using so many trees."

Baldwin's one-bedroom, 1,100-square foot house will cost her about $65,000 - mainly because she and her friends will be able to do much of the labor themselves.

A LOOK AT COSTS, CONSTRUCTION

Straw-bale construction can cost as little as $10 a square foot, for a plain box shed in which the owner does all the labor. A more realistic cost, allowing for professional foundation, electrical work and roofing, is $60 to $90 a square foot.

"We don't want people to think they can build really, really cheaply with straw. But they can save," Butchart said.

Straw bales cost about $3 apiece in season. A typical one-story house uses 350 to 400 bales.

Construction is straightforward:

Bales of straw are stacked like bricks along a wide foundation, each course overlapping by half a bale. The bales are pinned to the foundation and to each other with steel reinforcing bars, sunk like needles into the straw. On the top course, a ladder-like wooden frame is laid to carry the weight of the roof.

The roof, walls and foundation are tied together with long threaded bolts or tensioned wire.

For larger buildings, such as those with a second story, standard post-and-beam construction is used to bear the weight of the building, and the straw bales are simply filled in.

Any kind of straw can be used, as long as it is tightly compressed and well dried. "You can use wheat, barley, oats, rye, even rice straw," said Robinson.

Straw is what's left from the harvest of grain, as opposed to hay, which is dried grass grown as animal fodder.

When the walls are finished, the exposed bales are covered with chicken wire or commercial stucco netting, then plastered with three coats of stucco.

"A finished straw-bale house looks very elegant," said Robinson. "It doesn't look strange or funky at all. It passes what I call the `mother test:' It's the kind of place you'd let your mother know you live in."

Builders find that straw bales lend themselves easily to all sorts of architectural filips like niches, cornices, alcoves and window seats.

"It's a very malleable, very sculptural medium." said Robinson. "You can put in niches and alcoves and other touches that in standard construction would cost thousands of dollars extra."

As for the Markholts, they are so happy with their new barn, they are already looking for a place to build a little straw-bale house.