In July 2003, I was immersed in the early phases of planning and design to build a home for my family. I have long been interested in sustainable building systems, and have contemplated using straw-bale construction several times. However, each time I was dissuaded by a combination of cost, difficulty to secure building approval, and the inevitably “funky” nature of most straw bale homes. Don’t get me wrong, I love many elements of the organic and unique nature of straw-bale constructions. However, much of my work (sustainable community development) and personal interest are focused on finding systems that are accessible financially, aesthetically, and culturally to the broadest segment of our society. If we are to create broad-based change, we need alternatives that are attractive to a significant portion of our society.
With these views and constraints in mind, I’d reluctantly turned away from straw-bale construction as I searched for viable systems for our family home. During a conversation with a local architect committed to similar principles, he referred me to an article in The Last Straw describing an experiment Chris Magwood had conducted to create pre-manufactured straw-bale panels. As I read the article, I realized that a number of the key obstacles I’d been concerned about with straw-bale construction–cost and time of stuccoing, lack of uniformity in final wall profiles, exposure during construction–could potentially be solved through this method.
Over the next six months, Chris and I carried on a dialogue about potentially working together to further develop the system. In December 2003, Chris came to northwestern Colorado and led a three-day workshop in which we continued to develop the concept and built panels for a small utility shed. By the end of the workshop, a number of us were sufficiently convinced of the viability of the approach that I committed to designing our family’s home using the concept.
Over the next six months I hired local architect Rob Hawkins and a prominent straw-bale engineer, Jeff Ruppert, to help us work through the many design and engineering issues necessary to secure County approval for our project. Although several post-and-beam straw-bale structures had already been built in our area, we anticipated close scrutiny by the County given the novelty of our approach.
At the same time, several close friends expressed interest in joining with us and building two other homes adjacent to our newly acquired home site. Neither family was capable of qualifying for conventional mortgages due to lack of credit history or modest incomes. Consequently, we decided to pursue qualification for the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Rural Development 502 Home Mortgage program. This excellent program assists families with 80 percent or less of the median income secure a home mortgage at rates and payments compatible with their family incomes.
Unfortunately for alternative builders, however, this program is very conventional in the type of homes that will normally qualify for purchase or construction. We knew that it would be impossible to secure approval for a straw-bale construction under their conventional lending criteria. I was also aware, from past community development projects, that Rural Development had a largely unknown program at the national level called the Rural Housing Demonstration Program. The program essentially creates a separate pool of mortgage funds that are available for state offices that have a new type of housing initiative that they want to experiment with.
As one might expect, securing approval for such a program was not easy. Working with another nonprofit organization called Rural Community Assistance Corporation, we spent over six months writing the proposal and managing the many complicated interpersonal and bureaucratic dynamics that would finally, in early September of this year, lead to approval for the two homes to be built as straw-bale structures.
An exciting element of our effort is that the two houses will use two different approaches to straw-bale construction. One home, a 1250 square foot, three bedroom, one-story structure, will use the panel systems we developed in the construction our house. The other will use a unique post-and-beam system incorporating wood I-beam trusses placed vertically as posts with microlam sill beams and straw-bale infill.
The project will be conducted under the auspices of our newly formed for-profit construction company, Neighborhood Builders. We are under contract to have the homes completed by mid-April. We are planning to integrate as much monitoring as possible given the very modest budgets we have been given to complete the project (under $95 sf including land costs). It is our hope that our successful completion of these homes will make it more likely that sustainable building systems will become a more accepted part of federal and state housing programs in the U.S.

Brett KenCairn is a principal of Neighborhood Builders, PO Box 125, Oak Creek, CO 80467, <bkencairn@springsips.com>.