[Strawbale] Anti Cement Folks / an unsustainable policy

[Hank Carr]

Timothy Minerd wrote:

> Perhaps if there were a collection of: methods, experiences
> & costs that could be referenced, those looking for quick
> information could be served, but more important (and costly)
> is to find hard data on general costs, R-value, availability,
> etc. that could turn the eye of conventional builders beyond
> a small but highly concerned group, and wouldn't that create
> a larger impact on the whole?

Tim,

We've started to put together what I think you're talking about.  We've
begun to build a straw bale construction portal.  It seems to be a fairly
popular destination even in its infancy as we're getting over 2000 sessions
per week from around 60 countries.

The portal is temporarily located here:

http://www.dna.ca/sbportal

It includes a long FAQ as well as some free complete plans.

With respect to this whole pro- vs. anti-cement thread the discussion is
really about the difference between practical environmentalism and romantic
environmentalism.  If you go to Google and type in practical
environmentalism" there is LOTS of information.  I think that this is a very
good article:

http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.14079/pub_detail.asp

Cement is neither good nor evil.  It is an inanimate building material.
Yes, it has a great deal of embodied energy and as a result is responsible
for a great deal of CO2 production but it is extremely long lived, well
accepted, and readily available.  It also produces a plaster that is easy to
reproduce and that has consistently good performance.

I've been a member of this list and SB-R-Us for years.  I have yet to hear a
single substantiated story of a well built and well maintained cement
plastered straw bale wall failing.  There have been many examples cited
where the failure resulted from cracks or poor detailing but those failures
would have occurred in earthen and lime plastered buildings as well.  Not a
single case.

There are plans on our straw bale portal for a 27' 8" x 27' 8" building (25'
x 25' interior) building.  That building contains around 300 bales of straw.
It would use less than a tonne of cement were it plastered with cement
plaster.  The atmospheric carbon sequestered in the straw when the building
was built would be equivalent to 5.9 tonnes of atmospheric CO2.  The average
energy savings here in Canada based on the CMHC study would be around 750 kg
per year.  Over an extremely conservative 50 year lifespan of the building
the CO2 reduction as a result of that energy savings would be in the order
of 37.5 tonnes.  By comparison the CO2 from the cement is rather small.

I started the Practical Straw Bale Construction list a few years ago to
complement the big two romantic straw bale construction lists and to offer a
place where the environmental politics of the list members wouldn't get in
the way of a practical discussion of the hows and whys of straw bale
construction.  It's now up to more than 350 members and is the fastest
growing straw bale construction list on the internet by far.  It will never
replace this list or SB-R-Us, especially if you're planning to use lambs
wool to insulate your attic or plastered used carpet for your partition
walls but if you're going to be shopping at Home Depot it might be useful.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/practical-sbc

All of the things that people like Chris Magwood in Canada and John
Swearingen in Australia are doing are definitely better for the environment
than cement.  I've been working hard to reduce the amount of cement that
goes into the buildings that I've been drawing and we're looking at even
more radical (for us) changes in the next few months.  The uber-green
building isn't for everyone, though, and it's better that you do what you're
comfortable doing than to do nothing at all.  I know...that isn't very
romantic of me to say but I'm a practical environmentalist.

Hank.