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Green Building Basics
Straw Bale House Costruction
Simple, Natural Materials In Green Building
Looking up to the loft, the use of green building materials makes for a clean and simple design. The horizontal beam that supports the loft was recycled from a friend's home renovation project. The beam had been cut in half during demolition. A steel plate was used to tie it back together and the splice became a visual element.
The railing uprights are 2 x 3's that are fastened to the beam with steel angle iron. The horizontal rungs of the railing are made of bamboo. The ladder is designed to be flush with the wall when not in use and pulls out for climbing up to the loft. When pulled out, the steps of the ladder become parallel to the floor for easy climbing.
Looking up to the loft, the use of green building materials makes for a clean and simple design. The horizontal beam that supports the loft was recycled from a friend's home renovation project. The beam had been cut in half during demolition. A steel plate was used to tie it back together and the splice became a visual element.
The railing uprights are 2 x 3's that are fastened to the beam with steel angle iron. The horizontal rungs of the railing are made of bamboo. The ladder is designed to be flush with the wall when not in use and pulls out for climbing up to the loft. When pulled out, the steps of the ladder become parallel to the floor for easy climbing.
Code does not permit the use of a loft as a sleeping area without a full sized staircase. The home owner must take responsibility of what is safe and manageable to them.
Although the loft in this small straw bale home does not have full headroom, the scale of the space feels very comfortable. With the vaulted ceiling, it gives the impression of sleeping in a roomy tent. The window above the bed is used to ventilate the warm air out of the house at night and can be used as an emergency escape in case of a fire. The wall is unpainted gypsum plaster. Green building does more with less, and eliminating paint on the walls saved money and work.
The skylight to the left lights the room from two sides for an even glow. It also gives a view to the stars at night. There is plenty of storage on either side of the room.
For detailed information on how these floors were created, see pages 42-49 of the Building With Awareness Guidebook and Chapter 3 of the Building With Awareness DVD video.
This is the view of the main living area looking down from the loft. In small spaces, several techniques can be used to visually expand the size of a room. This main living area functions as both the living room and dining room in a space that would normally be the living room alone. The Japanese-style technique of changing floor height to delineate different rooms is used here. The space below the raised floor is storage that is accessed through two panels that lift up in the recycled oak floor. Also note that a low wall and a bookcase are used to further define the separate spaces without the need for a full-height wall. Architecture that is small in scale can still be very liveable. The lower floor is the acid-stained concrete mentioned earlier.
To brighten up the interior, unpainted white walls were used to complement the natural earth plastered colored walls. The straw bale wall with the window has a quarter-inch finish coat of gypsum plaster on top of the one-inch-thick brown earth plaster. The adobe wall to the right has a finish coat of white mud. White mud is made by mixing powdered white Kaolin clay (available from a ceramic supply house) with white sand, a bit of powered wheat paste, and water. Even with the two walls meeting in the corner, it is difficult to tell which is gypsum and which is earth plaster. The mud is much easier to apply as it does not have the fast setting time of gypsum plaster.