Re: Straw Bale Housing

Troy,

At Hartwick College in Oneonta NY, students, faculty, and community folks
have built a strawbale house at our environmental center in conjunction with
a course on The Architecture of the Sacred. Sandy Huntington is the faculty
member teaching and building. Last year, I brought Winona LaDuke to the site
to meet those of us working on a sustainable living program and she told us
of her reservation's interest in strawbale construction. One of our
strawbale graduates(also Math and Philosophy) is now working there in
Minnesota. I recently made a call to our local antipoverty organization to
see if we could work with them on construction of a proposed homeless
shelter. It might be too late in the planning process for this to happen,
but we are exploring this route. Get in touch with Sandy Huntington for
details on the strawbale project, Zach McKenna, director of Pine Lake
Environmental Center, and go on the Hartwick website to see pictures.

Kate O'Donnell
Professor and Chair,Sociology
Faculty,Latin American Studies and Women's Studies
Hartwick College
Oneonta, N.Y. 13820

> -----Original Message-----
> From: service-learning-owner@csf.colorado.edu
> [mailto:service-learning-owner@csf.colorado.edu]On Behalf Of Troy Robey
> Sent: Miércoles, 26 de Febrero de 2003 09:24 p.m.
> To: sl@csf.colorado.edu
> Subject: Straw Bale Housing
>
>
> Has anyone done any service projects using straw bale materials to build
> houses? I'm working with an instructor who would like to offer an
> alternative spring break next year in which students would spend a week
> learning the technology and then the remainder of the semester would be
> spent with outreach in our local community about straw bale as an
> alternative building material. We have a lot of straw out here on the
> Palouse which normally gets burned each season, so this project has some
> great connections with local pollution prevention, utilizing renewable
> resources, and alternatives to synthetic materials (e.g., fiberglass
> insulation). Ideally we would like the spring break project to
> culminate in
> the construction of a structure that would benefit an underserved
> individual or family, or even better, for the students to learn the
> technology directly from the underserved population and to build the
> structure with them. We've spoken with a number of Habitat for Humanity
> offices, and it sounds like they don't use straw bale very often.
> Apparently it's cheaper for them to use traditional materials that are
> donated.  We've spoken with a couple Indian reservations that have used
> straw bale, but they did not have plans for future structures.
>
> Just wanted to see if anyone has experience with this, or if
> anyone has ideas.
>
> Peace,
>
> Troy
>
> Troy Robey
> Service Learning Coordinator
> Community Service Learning Center
> Washington State University
>
> Office: Compton Union Building, B25
> (509) 335-0578
>
> Spring '03 office hours: M 9-12, T 1-3, W 11-4, Th 9-12
>
>
>
>
> http://cub.wsu.edu/cslc
>