[Strawbale] Living Roof (on strawbale) - advice?

[Speireag Alden]

Sgrìobh Rob Tom:

>Heidi;
>
>I'm not your "darlin'"

     Aw, Rob.  She's just trying to be funny and friendly.

>  and when people speak of "Living Roofs" on a strawbale list, they 
>usually *do* mean a roof deck overlain with straw bales, in the 
>manner as described in The Straw Bale House, depicting the 
>configuration developed by Michel Bergeron/ArchiBio.

     Pish and tush.  As Humpty Dumpty said, "When I use a word, it 
means just what I choose it to mean."  I refer to my roof as a living 
roof all the time, and I've done it several different ways, including 
Michel's, but not only that way.

>If the only role that straw is going to play in your "living" roof, is 
>flakes of straw as mulch over the growing medium, then I'd say that those 
>flakes will likely get blown off by the wind unless you put some sort of
>netting over the straw.

     In my experience, it took a microburst which developed into a 
tornado not far from here to knock a few flakes off the roof.  In 
this moist climate, once there is a bit of rain into the bales, they 
don't want to go anywhere with the wind.  Also, if you pack things in 
together, the bales are restrained by their neighbors, even after you 
cut 'em.

     I did a temporary roof with just flakes, on my shed.  I didn't 
lose hardly any to the wind.  Both house and shed are reasonably 
sheltered, but not completely.

     The thing which surprised me most, and caused the most problem, 
was the fact that the straw decomposed quickly enough that before I 
realized it sunlight was hitting the plastic layer, and degrading it. 
Thickening up the cover solved that (after I replaced the plastic, of 
course).

-Speireag.

-- 
The chill's in the air
Even so, we are gaining
on Old Man Winter.

-Speireag.