Strawbale House

Rosalba and I have purchased a number of books recently covering sustainable homes to look for inspirations on what we would like in our future home. Most of these books we purchased from “The Good Life Book Club” that, I think, is run by Earth Garden.

The “Natural Home Builder – Volume One” book contains stories of 16 homes that were built using sustainable methods. The book contains lots of colour pictures and covers homes built using straw bales, mud bricks, stone, and timber.

Reading through this book you get a feeling of the enthusiasm of the owners of the various homes and you realize that building a home yourself, or at least parts of it, is not an insurmountable task. The stories are well written and the pictures show the unique aspects of each home very well.

Having finished this book leaves you wanting more and eager to get started on your own dream home.

A thoroughly recommended book if you are planning to build your own home using sustainable methods or if you just want to see what other people have been able to achieve.

Our architect recommended that we read the book “Building Your Straw Bale Home” by Brian Hodge, especially if we would like to do some things ourselves in the process of building our house. Brian Hodge is a builder with over 30 years experience in a large variety of building projects.

I bought our copy of this book earlier this week and have had a good browse through the book so far. Brian covers every aspect of building a straw bale house from how councils see straw bale houses all the way to step-by-step instructions supported by diagrams and photographs.

Brian’s writing style is easy to follow and straight to the point as you would expect and the illustrations are clear and helpful.

From my first impression I think this book will become an important source of reference for Rosalba and myself during the actual construction phase of our house for any tasks we perform ourselves and helping us to communicate more effectively with tradesmen and the builder.

While reading through some magazines to work out how we best could get what we wanted out of our future home we came across this ad for a book of home designs. Wanting to build with straw bales we were intrigued by that book as the ad mentioned all sorts of building types including straw bale houses.

The book is published by an architect named Peter Lees and very reasonably priced at only $29. Now this book does not contain finished plans but enough information to help you work out what you’d like or not in your house.

I bought this book thinking that it would give us a head start in the planning phase. This was not the case in the end as Peter Lees has some strong views in favour of loft houses and both Rosalba and I have strong views against multiple levels in our future home.

To be fair though, if you are open to multi level living than this book is certainly worth the small cost and it does feature some nice home designs. If you are interested you can find more information on Peter Lees website at www.cheaphomedesigns.com.

I am keen to use alternative energy generation with our new house as much as possible. Currently we are planning the main energy source to be solar panels installed on the roof of the shed and house.

I have recently look at what is available and have found what looks like quite a good deal on Jaycar Electronics’ website where you can find a wind turbine and generator producing up to 200 Watts at a very reasonable price of currently $499.

Granted this is a kit that needs to be assembled but considering it produces up to 200 Watts at half the cost of a solar panel that produces about 100 Watts, it is something I believe is worthwhile trying.

I can’t wait until our house is advanced enough that we can look into setting up one of these wind turbines.