Mold was the last straw for this 'innovative' house

Minneapolis Star-Tribune ^ | May 10, 2003 | Steve Brandt

[sarcasm]

What makes it heartbreaking, people say, is how eagerly Sherri Simmons looked forward to moving into the new farmhouse-style house just off Lake Street in Minneapolis.

"I've been excited from beginning to end," she said in 1998 as the house neared completion.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Straw! Good grief. Forget about mold, it sounds like a supreme fire hazard. If it didn't mold it would undergo spontaneous combustion some day.

[xm177e2]

Isn't this exactly what the enviros want? Biodegradeable is good, right?

[HiTech RedNeck]

oh, and wait till the big bad wolf comes by: i'll huff, and i'll puff, and i'll blooooooooooooooooooooooowwww yer house down

[chance33_98]

And people make fun of the good folks from West Virginny and CanTucky. Damn Northern folk ain't got a lick of sense.

[Paul C. Jesup]

"I spent a whole year on this house and I didn't make anything on it," he said. "It really hurts me to know it's demolished"

This guy is not only a eco-nut/idiot, but he is also questionably guilty of defrauding people, a $91.000 house should take no more (barring weather) than 3 months to build and this guy took everyone for a ride for a year to the atune of $109,000 grand more than it should of cost(around $200,000 total).

I personally know housing contractors and how they do their work, so I know what I am talking about and this guy could be brought up on charges.

[alloysteel]

I bet this one is never reported on in "The Mother Earth News". They are BIG proponents of "natural" materials for homebuilding.

For termites and vermin. Human beings have just got to learn to get along with their non-human neighbors on Spaceship Earth. And if the mold constituency checks in, we have to make room for them as well.

[CobaltBlue]

One of the ways that people who tout unconventional home designs explain the higher cost of building them is that in the long run they save you money.

I don't think I would have gone for the hay bales, but I was interested in a design that had a sort of double envelope, sort of two sets of outer walls with an insulating space in between. My husband put his foot down so we live in an ordinary house, but after reading this article maybe it's for the best.

Reminded me of Frank Lloyd Wright houses. He was a genius, but his roofs always leak.

[sit-rep]

Straw insulation... and a building department let it go? They should be responsible for this.

Years ago, I drove a big truck for a living. One day I was driving through Kentucky, I got on the CB radio and asked my fellow truckers, I siad "Hey gents, you see those big rolls of hay out there in the fields the livestock feeds on over the winter, why don't the rot in the center as a pile of grass does?

Their answer came quite quickly and many answered..."If it is rolled nice and tight driver, this prevents mold and mildew." Because of how quick the many answered, I would have thought that this would be a basic concept on anything "hay".

SR

[dalereed]

"Reminded me of Frank Lloyd Wright houses."

Knew him personally and worked on his personal house.

Durring WW2 I remember him coming to the house and pleading with my dad to do some of his nutty projects.

[Boot Hill]

Howdy sit-rep,

"...more than $1.1 million in public money."

Hot diggity damn! I'm getting out of the engineering business and going into the gubermint funded construction business. Here's a few of the proposals I'm submitting Monday.

• Mud brick houses to be built in rainy Washington state.

• All glass houses to be built on the San Andreas earthquake fault in California.

• A paper mache aircraft carrier for the Navy.

• A shuttle replacement for NASA consisting of a coal-powered ultra-light aircraft that can be flown into orbit.

After that, I'm getting into solar power.

--Boot Hill

[AmericanVictory]

We suggest that Marxine Water demand that a lot of these be built in Watts on a federal grant. It would make things easier for the folks there, while providing affordable housing.

[Paul C. Jesup]

I will tell you that double outer wall design is really a useless waste of money. If you want better energy conservation, buy a higher grade of insulation.

[Paul C. Jesup]

That works on the outside because the hay is allowed to breath, but if you put it in a tight enclosed (non-air tight) space, it will collect moisture and start growing mold.

[alloysteel]

Not that walls cannot be improved. In order to place heavier (and continuous) insulation, there is a design, in which the thickness allowed for the wall is about 2" to 4" more than typical 2x4 stud design, in which either 2x6 studs are used, or staggered 2x4 studs spaced at 32", with one set of studs for the internal wall, and the other set on the external wall, offset at 16". The insulation is installed without breaks or gaps, with no direct contact between the interior and exterior wall surfaces. Thus no thermal conduction, and only limited internal wall convection.

[Wonder Warthog]

"Straw! Good grief. Forget about mold, it sounds like a supreme fire hazard. If it didn't mold it would undergo spontaneous combustion some day."

Wrong. Both mold and "spontaneous combustion" relate to the straw (or any other building material) getting wet and not being adequately re-dried. As to the fire hazard--as the last step, all surfaces of the straw are (or should be) covered with a layer of cement or plaster. Straw bale construction is a very old technique, with houses built using it having lasted a century or more.

The schmucks who built this place obviously made every possible error in the book (and some that aren't).

[chuknospam]

The big story here is how a gov't subsidised project with volunteer labor cost $200,000 for a end product and the end product was defective. It would have cost $95,000 to $125,000 had it been done by the private sector firm by someone who had worked the bugs out & was specialized in that form of construction.

[Prodigal Son]

She was a graduate of Southside's homebuyer education program.

Hmmm...

[Between the Lines]

She's building a home from straw bale?!?!
Her family gasped and turned pale.
It didn't work for the pigs,
Would you rather try twigs?
But she stuck with the straw though it failed.

[Conservativegreatgrandma]

Notice all the public money involved in this?