What I would like to do here in occasional posts is to document how my family lives in a comfortable, modern, energy efficient house constructed of strawbales. Some of what follows will be technical, but much will be impressionistic.
I hope to also attract some guest posts from those who have lived in our house previously (more on that later). Since there are several strawbale houses, as well as passive houses, in Yellow Springs, Ohio, I want to give those houses their due credit for contributing to what I feel will be an important part of solving our current energy and environmental challenges - decreasing the consumption of fossil-fuel energy where we live.
Starting with a bit of history, the first strawbale house in Yellow Springs was built about twelve years ago by Andy and Beth Holyoke for his parents. In 2004, they were planning to build a second house, and by chance we (my wife Katie Seidl plays a crucial role in all of this) were looking for a project. Very quickly we decided that building a strawbale house, about which we knew very little, sounded intriguing. In a quick planning phase we adapted a design that Beth had drafted; our intention was to build a home for when our kids were older and we would be ready to downsize.
Up until now we have been living in an old house, about 2000 sq.ft. (190 sq. meters) to which we have made many upgrades over the years to increase energy efficiency. In spite of that effort, our winters were spent in a fairly cold house, using a wood stove to heat the central part of the house, while needing heavy sweaters and slippers to keep warm. Although there is nothing wrong with that lifestyle, it did seem a bit ridiculous when we had built a very energy-efficient house a few blocks away, where the tenants were enjoying a cozy, warm house. During my sabbatical from the University of Dayton during the 2010-2011 academic year we lived in Berlin while I was working at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and did just fine as a family in an apartment with only 70 sq.mt. of space. In our minds before the stay in Berlin was that we would return to Yellow Springs and move into the (now seemingly) spacious strawbale house, which we did.
In a next post I will describe the house and some of the features that I find particularly interesting.
