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Building with Bales

Strawbale walls achieve highest insulation values and offer a healthy, beautiful living environment. This video (6min 0sec)) is a trailer for a DVD called "Houses of Straw", shot in Germany. It shows the recent developments, many examples show the different possibilities of building with straw. In interviews with owner-builders, architects and experts we hear a lot of important aspects. And: an exciting fire test shows: straw bale walls don´t burn!

Straw has many useful qualities. Tied into bales it serves as a highly effective building material. You can build homes out of it. All you need is bales from the farmer next door, so solid foundations, and you're ready to go.

This video has a timelapse section of a crew building a simple strawbale building in Germany.

Strawbale House

Straw-bale construction is a building method that uses straw bales as structural elements, insulation, or both. It is commonly used in natural building. It has advantages over some conventional building systems because of its cost and easy availability, and its high insulation value.

Although grasses and straw have been in use in a range of ways in building since pre-history around the world, their incorporation in machine-manufactured modular bales seems to date back to the early 20th century in the midwestern United States, particularly the sand-hills of Nebraska, where grass was plentiful and other building materials (even quality sods) were not.

Adobe Abode

To live in an adobe home is to be cradled by the arms of Mother Earth. Adobe is the indigenous construction style of the American Southwest. An adobe is a natural building material mixed from sand, clay, and straw, dung or other fibrous materials, which is shaped into bricks using frames and dried in the sun. It is similar to cob and mudb-rick. Adobe structures are extremely durable and account for the oldest extant buildings on the planet. Adobe buildings also offer significant advantages in hot, dry climates; they remain cooler as adobe stores and releases heat very slowly.

Buildings made of sun-dried earth are common in the Middle East, North Africa, and in Spain (usually in the Mudéjar style), but adobe had been in use by indigenous peoples of the Americas in the Southwestern United States, Meso-America, and the Andean region of South America for several thousand years, although often substantial amounts of stone are used in the walls of Pueblo buildings. This method of brick-making was imported to Spain in the 16th century by Spaniards who had traveled to Mexico and Peru.

Baby Knows

Are babies a good judge of character? In a new study at Yale University, babies were shown skits where different block of different shapes and colors climb up hills.

This video for example shows a skit where a yellow triangle helps a red circle up the hill. In this (next) skit, a square block aggressively pushes the circle back down.

After the performance, the researchers showed twelve 6-month olds both the helping and hindering blocks. All of them chose the helper. In a similar experiment with ten month olds, the majority pointed to the circle helper..."

Think your baby doesn't know whether mommy or daddy are positive or negative? Maybe you'll have to change your thinking.