Case Study: Straw Bale House - Communities Living Sustainably in

Inspiration gained from visits to Eco Homes
– adopting a new way of living and learning new skills
Steve and Karen were members of Transition Town in Bristol. They moved to Burton Bradstock,
near Bridport, in August 2013, to a brick built cottage with a slate roof built in 1901. When they
moved in, the property had electric storage heaters, water was heated with an immersion heater
and the whole house needed rewiring.
In 2013, Steve and Karen attended the Open Eco Homes event which was hosted by Transition
Town Bridport and the greendor project in Transition Town Dorchester with support from
Communities Living Sustainably in Dorset,
In 2013, Steve and Karen attended the Open Eco Homes event which was hosted by Transition
Town Bridport and the greendor project of Transition Town Dorchester with support from
Communities Living Sustainably in Dorset. They gained some ideas for what they could do with
their house. They have since installed cavity wall insulation, a wood pellet boiler, secondary
glazing, solar PV and solar thermal. The insulation of the roof and floors has also been improved.
But the biggest project has been to extend the kitchen. One
of the Eco Homes Steve and Karen visited in 2013 included a
straw bale extension. After doing some research into a range
of options, they realised it would be cheaper to use traditional
materials. They decided to build their extension from straw
bales and to render with lime in order to minimise the
embodied energy of the extension1. Steve went on a straw
bale building course at the Dorset Centre for Rural Skills
(http://www.dorsetruralskills.co.uk/), and studied bricklaying
videos on YouTube, and so they were able to do the majority
of the work themselves, with some help from relatives, friends
and people they met on the course. They did however call in professional roofers.
While work on the kitchen was being done, the couple cooked in a camp kitchen under a gazebo in
the garden. They acknowledge that this year’s good summer made this possible, and that the
speed of the build could have been slowed considerably had the conditions been less favourable.
The finished kitchen looks very modern and has the feel of a
conventional brick building, apart from the thick walls. Steve had
basic DIY skills previously ‘but we’ve learnt so much about a new
technology, and how to work in as ‘green’ a way as possible,
through working on the house’ explained Karen. Steve added,
‘Traditional technologies, which have almost died out, are very
time consuming, but we really believe that it was worth taking the
time, the kitchen is almost finished now and it already looks and
feels great, and it’s really warm and cosy!’
Steve and Karen opened their home for the CLS 2014 Open Eco Homes event and are available to
give advice on building with straw via the Transition Town Bridport Skill Sharing programme.
1
Embodied energy is the total energy required for the extraction, processing, manufacture and delivery of
building materials to the building site. Energy consumption produces CO2, which contributes to greenhouse gas
emissions, so embodied energy is considered an indicator of the overall environmental impact of building
materials and systems