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Student Mae Eisenbarth stacks a building block Tuesday toward construction of a straw house in front of the Kansas Technology Center at Pittsburg State University. The students’ assignment is to build an 800-square-foot home using an alternative construction method.
Before the threat of rain Tuesday, PSU students had erected most of the walls of their house of straw. But with rain in the forecast again today and Thursday, the builders decided to dismantle their work and try again when the sun promises to shine.

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October 21, 2009

Anonymous The Joplin Globe Wed Oct 21, 2009, 12:17 AM CDT

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.

Now, the technique is being used to build 4,000-square-foot, $1 million luxury homes outside Santa Fe and Albuquerque in New Mexico.

Lipscomb said that although such homes are relatively inexpensive, have an insulation value six times that of traditional construction and have been shown in studies to be fire-resistant, they still are considered “alternative.”

“It’s made out of (a) waste product which is readily available and completely affordable — in many cases free — but the people who build them are only those open to ideas and who search it out,” he said.

Lipscomb estimated there are 10,000 such homes in the United States. His goal is to see more, particularly as a means of housing low-income populations.

“I want to inspire people,” he said. “The traditional answer is to throw money at problems like poverty and homelessness, but money is gone at the end of every month and bills show back up. This kind of thing is cool, fun and beautiful.

“You can learn how to do it easily, plan something like this in an area that needs housing, get free labor from the locals who see it as a novelty, and have an 800- to 1,000-square-foot home built in an afternoon at little to no cost.”

Senior Aaren Marsh said she actually laughed when she learned about straw-bale homes. “I just couldn’t believe it,” she said.

But she changed her attitude Tuesday.

“First of all, we need to be building smaller homes, because they have such wasted space that we don’t need,” she said. “And in a smaller home, everyone is together. You know your family better. You’re closer.”

Emily Kodder, a senior, said the project was a true education.

“We’ve been doing research on alternative construction methods, and it just didn’t make sense how a house of straw could be sturdy,” she said. “But after having done this and hearing from him (Lipscomb) the value of it, it really opened my eyes.”

Project plan

The Pittsburg State University students plan to reconstruct the home and complete the stucco work sometime before Nov. 10.