Back     Latest news from Green Building Press    Subscribe to our newsletter

Strawbale demonstrations at Ecobuild

Posted: 28/01/2008

Some essential strawbale building techniques, as well as some new ideas will be demonstrated at this year's Ecobuild (Earl's Court, London, 26-28 February). Ecobuild is the UK 's only event dedicated to sustainable design and construction.

Strawbale pioneers amazonails will be teaching the basics of strawbale construction, as well as advanced techniques developed by the business like ‘compressive frame’, lime and clay plastering, and low impact foundations, in half-hour demonstrations on each day of the three day event. amazonails director Barbara Jones will be on hand to answer questions as well as demonstrating.

Over the past year Barbara Jones has been design consultant and supervised construction of a number of strawbale buildings, including the largest in the UK which is also thought to be the largest in Europe – offices and auction room for fine art auctioneers G E Sworder and Sons of Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex.

This 1100 square metre, £1.2 million building is now being fitted out and the first auction is due to be held in May this year. The building incorporates a unique technique called ‘compressive frame’. The roof is supported on a timber frame while the strawbale walls are constructed, but it is then lowered onto the strawbales, which become the loadbearing structure. In this way the roof protects the strawbale walls from the weather while they are being built and plastered.

The most recent building completed by amazonails is an education and training facility for the Hackney City Farm, completed in December.

Strawbale constructers find that materials for a house built with straw bales cost about the same as for a conventional timber-frame house but significantly less than brick and block. A family-sized house in the UK could cost about £60,000, excluding land.

There are 4 million tons of straw a year surplus to requirements in the UK now. This is sufficient to build 250,000 homes a year.

Contrary to popular conception, strawbale buildings are not a fire risk. They have been subjected to rigorous fire testing by amazonails, who say that the reason strawbales resist burning is similar to the reason it is difficult to burn a telephone directory, though easy to burn a page, and plastered strawbale walls have an even greater resistance.

Green Building Press  
 

Back     Latest news from Green Building Press    Subscribe to our newsletter

2316