Straw Bale Construction Advantages and Challenges

GREEN BUILDING - Learn about Paja Construction's building philosophy

IMAGE GALLERIES - Construction projects using straw bales

Magic Walls

This is the original article submitted to The Last Straw for publication in Issue 52 (December 2005)

“Daddy,” my 5 yr old son said to me a couple years ago, “you’re just like Harry Potter!” He had come back from a few days away to encounter a straw bale wall around our home where there had been nothing 72 hours ago, and he stood looking at the sculpted straw held down by stucco netting with something akin to awe. “Did you use a wand?” he asked and I laughed and assured him there was real sweat involved but that straw bale walls DO go up faster than almost any other kind of wall…and that he had just won first prize for the most unusual question I’d heard in my 16 years as straw bale contractor and artist.

Working with Magic Walls (as my son happily calls them) is an interesting mixture of questions, hard work, innovation and excitement. Many advantages of the Walls have surfaced over the years. For one, it truly is faster, much faster, to raise - but not stucco! - a straw bale wall: I have, for example, arrived on site of a 250-ft long wall with three coworkers at 8:00 am, and left at 3:00 pm with the foundations dug, the concrete poured, and the first two courses of bales stacked. Then there is the ease with which Magic Walls can be carved and shaped into multiple stepdowns, arches, nichos, windows, or benches, and can easily snake between trees and other landscaping obstacles; this is a feature advantage that simply cannot be matched by any other building method I’m aware of. A third advantage comes with the easy practicality of retrofitting existing concrete block walls with partial bales to reinforce, beautify, and add longevity to those block walls. But my favorite advantage is in the truly unique ability to work with clients as we decide exactly where and how high a wall should be. “Don’t worry about where the wall will go,” I say to a customer agonizing over what her future wall should look like, “we’ll just use the bales as giant Lego blocks and decide as we place ‘em.” So we unload the bales, stack them more-or-less where we think we want the wall, stand back to look at it - and then adjust and move, bend and restack using the bales as visuals until the wall looks and feels right. The whole Lego process can take less than an hour, but exponentially increases customer satisfaction by allowing everyone to see what the wall will look like before the wall itself goes up, and by allowing adjustments to be made if need be rather than wishing after construction that the wall had been in a different place or a different shape. Then, just as easily, the Lego bales can be taken down and stacked to the side while the foundation is poured. It’s as close to real Magic as my son could wish!

However, the magic of straw walls has not stopped the questions from coming, nor from continuing. Paja Construction (‘Paja’ meaning straw in Spanish) has come a long, long way since tentatively pouring the first foundation and laying the first walls, and many of the initial structural questions have indeed been answered. But even 16 years and hundreds of constructed walls is just a beginning, especially when inventing a completely new building method, and I continue pondering a fascinating array of my own questions - as well as those of clients, contractors, and building officials. What is the best foundation-to-straw connection? How tall can a wall be before it becomes unstable? How does one allow for the walls to ‘breath’ while assuring maximum strength in the stucco? What is the best way to waterproof a wall? How to avoid unsightly and structurally unsound cracks in the stucco? How much stucco is too little and what are the recommended sand/cement/lime/straw proportions? How much does a wall cost? And so on and on and on. I know of no other kind of building that is more exciting and privileged than developing a completely new system, but at times it can be downright tedious to repeatedly challenge and review my own methods and second-guess what Mother Nature will do…as again and again I go by my older walls and may note cracking or flaking of the stucco, or cut into a wall to examine the moisture content, or wish I had made the wall taller – or smaller, more curves, less curves, added a window, etc.

And then there are a few among the many fine contractors I know who, well, haven’t done it ‘right’. I only half facetiously joke that I’ve trained all my local competition through the quarterly workshops I give - which used to be a mere annoyance until more and more disgruntled people began calling me to fix recently-build walls and I realized not all contractors are sensible nor honest nor even willing to follow the most basic of common-sense ideas. I began seeing bale walls with no foundations whatsoever, or with ridiculously thin foundations. Walls with no stucco netting or strapping and therefore no real resistance to wind. Other walls plastered with unprotected adobe dirt and allowing that vital structural strength of the plaster to slowly crumble. Walls covered with plastic before stuccoing, and now steadily molding from the inside. Walls unimaginatively built or leaning crazily one way or another. And (my favorite) a wall with a fireplace built into it, which after some heavy use ignited the straw, proceeded to emit whispers of smoke out of the stucco for days and days, and steadfastly refused to go out even when doused with unbelievable amounts of water.

Yet despite the questions and the setbacks, the Magic of straw walls is, as my son knows, indeed a real thing: they continue to fascinate me and are a source of intense pleasure to build. I look forward, 50 years from now, to hobbling along one of those walls, poking it with my walking stick and proclaiming with satisfaction how it will last well into…the 31st century.