Straw Houses -- Their Fat, Bale-Filled Walls Are Snug, Cheap And Environmentally Friendly

Kate Calvery can't wait until she moves into her new house on Vashon Island. It will have a nice loft, big windows and, oh yeah, walls full of straw.

Work on the house won't begin for a few more weeks, but it will resemble a straw-bale shed built last year on the University of Washington campus as part of the process Calvery went through to win county approval to build her house. The shed is a scaled-down version of the house.

"It looks gorgeous," Calvery said of the storybook shed, with its thick stuccoed walls.

Calvery is among a small, but growing number of people across the country who are building straw-bale houses, which were last popular about 100 years ago on the treeless American Plains.

The fact that the houses are built mostly with tightly compressed bales of straw, cutting down on the use of wood, is one of their biggest selling points with people who want to conserve forest products.

Straw, the leftovers from a grain harvest (and not to be confused with hay, which is dried grass grown to feed animals), also is cheaper than wood. But building a straw-bale house doesn't save much money because the cost of the walls is but a fraction of the total cost of the house, and the stucco work needed is labor-intensive.

Calvery's shed cost about $20,000 to build. It was designed by Seattle architect Michelle Quesada and built last year by local contractor Andy Green. Her house will have 1,700 square feet of living space, including a 450-foot loft, and will cost about $160,000, she said.

He put it up on the University of Washington campus, where David Riley, a professor in the UW's Department of Construction Management, could oversee construction and test the structure to make sure it was sound and would stay dry - during what turned out to be one of the wettest winters on record.

Sensors placed in the walls showed the moisture level never rose above 16 percent, "a good sign," he said.

Riley's role was critical in the house gaining approval from King County, which has been more cautious than other counties around the state.

"It will gain acceptance," Riley said of the building method, "a little bit at a time."

He recently returned from a trip to Montana with a group of students, UW architecture professor Sergio Palleroni, and volunteers from Red Feather Development Group, a Bellevue-based nonprofit. They helped build a straw-bale house on the impoverished Crow Indian Reservation.

"It was like an Amish barn raising," said Palleroni of the 12-day project.

The house will serve as a model for others to be built by the 8,300-member tribe. The project means replacing many dilapidated mobile homes and providing jobs on a reservation where the unemployment rate is 75 percent.

"Straw is an inexpensive, easy-to-find commodity throughout most of this country," said Rob Young, executive director of Red Feather. "Straw-bale construction is economical, environmentally sound and the construction techniques are volunteer-friendly."

Major concerns about straw-bale houses are whether they can hold up in wet climates and earthquakes. In smaller buildings, the bales can be stacked like bricks, then attached to each other and the foundation with steel reinforcing bars. In bigger structures and in Calvery's shed and house, they are used to fill in the spaces between the framing wood in standard post-and-beam construction.

"The jury is still out (on whether) this is appropriate in Western Washington," said Chris Ricketts, plans-examination supervisor for the county's Building Services Division.

Most straw-bale houses are in areas with drier climates and less earthquake danger, such as the Midwest and Southwest, he explained. Little testing had been done on how they will survive in a climate as wet as ours.

However, Ricketts is more accepting of the houses than he was a few years ago, and he helped Riley gain a $10,000 grant from the county to perform more research and ensure they can be built to withstand earthquakes and our long wet winters.

"Rain is the biggest concern," said Riley.

The effect of moisture on straw bales can be minimized, Riley and others say, by the design of the house and the application of several coats of stucco.

Ricketts said that the county isn't ready to embrace straw-bale construction until the UW completes its research on how they hold up in this wet and earthquake-prone area. And that can't happen until Calvery's house, which is acting as the prototype, is built.

"We'll try to keep our minds open," he said, but added that projects will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the design and construction of the house.

"The more reliance on the straw bale the more difficulty we are going to have to approve it," he said.

Because of their thick walls (18 inches deep), straw-bale houses are much-better insulated than normal houses (about R-45 compared with the state standard of R-19). They also are are quiet inside and resemble the adobe houses of the Southwest.

"It feels real solid and is so quiet. It keeps very cool in the summer and warm in the winter," said Christina Baldwin, of Whidbey Island, who moved into her house in April 1996, making her a "pioneer" in the straw-bale movement.

It's held up well not only during the wet winter, but also a 5.6 earthquake in May 1996. "I was in the kitchen and felt the house lift. It was just fine."

Baldwin said she chose straw-bale as a way to "honor the area" and not use wood, even though she loves the feel of houses with wood. She had no trouble getting a loan from a local bank, she said, but homeowners' insurance was difficult.

"It was too strange for them," she said, adding that insurers were concerned about fire. Baldwin and others say such fears are unfounded.

While straw itself can burn quickly, it burns very slowly in tightly compressed bales because it lacks oxygen, Baldwin said.

"You can hold a blowtorch to it and it will only singe."

Whidbey Island has become a relative hotbed for straw-bale housing with more than a dozen built or under construction. The Port Townsend area, home of noted straw-bale architect Chris Stafford, also has a number of them, including one built in 1993 that is considered the first in the state.

Ted Butchart, who runs the Seattle-based Greenfire Institute, has been involved in designing and building more than 40 straw-bale houses in the West since 1991.

"It seems to be a design that's really taking off," Baldwin said.

But not outside King County, where the first straw-bale building went up two years ago near Carnation. Calvery's shed is the second, Ricketts said, adding that aside from her house, there are no other projects in the pipeline.

Straw-bale advocates hope that changes.

"I want my house to be the beginning of a movement toward acceptance," Calvery said.

At the state level, there is talk about building straw-bale houses for migrant workers in Eastern Washington. And there are people ready to design and build them here.

"I hope it (Calvery's house) won't be the last," said Quesada. "I think it has enormous potential."

Bill Kossen's phone message number is 206-464-2331. His e-mail address is: bkossen@seattletimes.com ------------------------------- For more information

To find out more about straw-bale construction, contact:

-- Ted Butchart, designer, Greenfire Institute, Seattle, 206-463-4188.

-- Chris Stafford, architect, Port Townsend, 360-379-8541.

-- David Riley, professor of construction management, University of Washington, 206-616-1917.

-- Web site on UW's straw-bale project in Montana: http://vcourses.caup.washington.edu:8900/public/CM599/index.html