Building Science for Strawbale Buildings

Over at buildingscience.com, the online home of Building Science Corporation (where you can benefit from the big-brained research and synthesis of Joe Lstiburek, John Straube, and others), there are tons of great articles like Can Highly Glazed Building Façades Be Green?, Capillarity — Small Sacrifices, and Ground Source Heat Pumps ("Geothermal") for Residential Heating and Cooling: Carbon Emissions and Efficiency. A new article went up there in the last few days titled Building Science for Strawbale Buildings. Like we said in the May 2005 feature in EBN, The Natural Building Movement, people are getting smarter about these materials and methods. The Building Science website says:

This digest will begin with a brief description of the system and materials, review moisture problems in buildings, and summarize how moisture control should be dealt with in strawbale buildings.

Headings and subheads include:

• The System
• The Materials
• Properties of Stucco
• Properties of Strawbales
• Durability and Performance: Moisture
• The Moisture Balance
• Wetting
• Drying
• Storage [of moisture]
• Rain Penetration Control for Strawbale Buildings
• Air Leakage Condensation Control for Strawbale Buildings
• Summary
• Reference

It might be noted that John Straube was a contributor to the book Design of Straw Bale Buildings: The State of the Art — this one should be in your library. Also check into Alternative Construction: Contemporary Natural Building Methods.