Sat, Nov 21 2009
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Published October 20, 2009 04:29 pm - PSU students use straw bales to build an eco-friendly house.  Grasping for straw w/ Straw bale construction info By Andra Bryan Stefanoni
news@joplinglobe.com PITTSBURG, Kan. — Students thought they were giving Mother Nature a hand Tuesday when they started an eco-friendly house, but Mother Nature wasn’t cooperating. After a team of students at Pittsburg State University worked the better part of a day building a house of straw bales, a storm threatened their efforts. By 9 a.m. Tuesday, students in associate professor Denise Bertoncino’s residential design class had stacked straw bales six high and added a framed door with the help of Jim Otter, chairman of the construction department. They also had wrapped the walls in chicken wire. Throughout the morning and part of the afternoon, they worked through occasional sprinkles and wind gusts of 25 mph. But as they began applying the initial coat of stucco to the exterior, they realized that the structure — which is supposed to be on display for the rest of the year in the courtyard of the Kansas Technology Center — would not have time to cure properly and would become soggy in the rain forecast for today. So they dismantled all but one wall, stowing the bales until they get a span of several sunny days. All their work was not for naught, however, said Bertoncino. “I think doing it once really showed us the process, and next time, we’ll probably have an even better end result,” she said. The students’ assigned project was to build a complete home of 800 square feet during a presumed time of economic hardship, and to use an alternative construction method, such as recycled tires, tamped earth or straw bales. Students worked under the direction of “Big John” Lipscomb, a self-described survivalist who has built 60 straw-bale homes across the United States — including one in Montana in which he, his wife and three daughters lived for eight years with no electricity or running water. He said it cost him $1,500 to build, and most of that was the cost of transporting bales to the building site. Now, the Lipscombs live in a 550-square-foot cabin he built in Toronto, Kan. They try to lead a simple, low-impact life, growing and raising their own food, growing and packaging heirloom seeds, and living debt-free. Nothing new The concept is not new: Lipscomb said straw homes were built in the Sand Hills in Nebraska after the Civil War, and they gained popularity again in the 1970s. 
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