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Straw as Building Material for Future

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A modern take on straw-bale construction may well be the grand design of the future if results coming out of the University of Bath are accepted by the construction industry. Think of a straw-bale house and you might imagine a tumbledown shack that leaks, creaks, slumps and smells somewhat of the farmyard. But step into Bale-Haus, a startlingly contemporary looking prototype home that has been built on the Bath Campus and there’s nary a wisp of straw to be seen. Instead, you are in a hallway of an upside down house with two bedrooms and a bathroom on the ground floor and an airy open plan living area upstairs. It feels like a little piece of Scandinavia has just arrived in Somerset, southwest England. The straw bales are all packed tightly inside a series of prefabricated rectangular wooden wall frames, which are then lime rendered, dried and finally slotted together like giant Lego pieces called ModCell panels.

People perceive straw houses as being a bit hippy and not particularly durable. Add to that the problems of getting mortgage – very few lenders will consider straw-bale construction. The benefits of straw, points out Professor Peter Walker, director of the University of Bath’s BRE Centre for Innovative Construction Materials, are that “it’s cheap, widely available and a good insulator. It’s been used in buildings houses for hundreds of years”.

The stack that remains after grain has been harvested – straw also helpfully soaks up carbon from the atmosphere and locks it in, so long as it is not allowed to decompose. For the building industry, which currently depends on materials with very high embedded energy costs -  concrete and brick are expensive in carbon terms both to make and to transport – straw could therefore offer a welcome solution to housing’s greenhouse gas emission.

The straw-bale house won’t get sopping wet in a thunderstorm or go up in a whoosh of flames if you knock over a candle. The results now being published by Walker and his research partner, Dr Katharine Beadle, who have spent the past 18 months testing the BaleHaus against an exhaustive list of risk factors that could rot it, burn it or blow it down, so far seem to be reassuring.

Beadle with his team took a ModCell unit to a test laboratory and tried to reduce it to ashes by strapping it to a fiery furnace and raising the temperature to over 1,000 degree Celsius. “It’s standard test to replicate a fire in a building.” explains Walker. “It means you know that a house will at least retain its structural integrity for half an hour, which gives people a chance to get out”. “It took an hour and a half of being in direct contact with the flames”, says Beadle, before the lime render began to drop off, “and then the straw did start to burn back, but because it’s so compacted it suffered more charring then actual disintegration.”

When it come to blowing the house down – hydraulic jacks were placed against the walls to replicate wind forces pushing against the bales – the ModCell panels moved a few millimeters, but stayed within the tolerances allowed for by the computer modeling carried out prior to its construction. That says Walker, could be very good news for the price of the eventual ModCell building system. “It means the house is stiffer than it needs to be.” The approximate cost of the current modular building system for this design is £132,000 from above the concrete slab. “Cost is a challenge to the introduction of this technology but as a prototype house I think it stacks up well,” said Walker. “The aspiration is that it should be cost competitive with more savings coming through reduced heating bills.”

To replicate the heat given off by humans and appliances arrays of incandescent light bulbs on timers blaze in every room at pre-programmed times of day “to see how much heat escapes, and what level of heating would be needed at different times of the year,” explains Beadle.

“That environmental modeling will give us all the numbers about the energy the house is predicted to use. And if we are predicting how it will operate in given climate change, we can then put in those variables.”

Sensors embedded within each wall panel constantly monitor the degree of moisture absorbed and then released back through the breathable lime render into the sir outside by the panels. And on the air tightness test that was carried out, BaleHaus came in way under the building regulations threshold, and did considerably better than the far lowest “best practice” standard.

- The Guardian

Fix Heat Loss In House Energy Efficiency For Saving Benefits

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Dealing with heat loss in house energy efficiency becomes more and more important as the cost of energy keeps rising. A lot of heat is lost from a house with no insulation.

With the use of well-placed insulation you can make your home more efficient and cut your energy bills dramatically. Lessen heat loss in house energy efficiency and it really can put money into your pocket. Money you could then spend on taking a well-earned short break.

Even more important than insulation is ventilation because if this is not right it could cost you your life! Each year people die, needlessly, from the silent killer, carbon monoxide poisoning. Mainly gas appliances that have not been properly installed or maintained cause this. Ventilation is also essential if you have solid fuel fires, gas fires or boilers with an open flue. Some simple safety measures are to regularly sweep chimneys and check airbricks or ventilation grills for any blockages. To never cover an appliance or block the convection air vents or outside flues. You should also never use a gas appliance that it is not working properly. It is important to carry out regular maintenance and checking of appliances.

Insulation is the easiest and most cost-effective energy efficiency move that you can make. So if your concerned about the planet or you just want to cut your household bills or have more money in your pocket, here are some steps you can take.

Wall Insulation
Wall insulation is the most important as this is the area of most loss at around thirty five percent. In more modern building heat loss in house construction is taken seriously.

Loft Insulation
With loft insulation if you do it yourself be sure to wear the proper protective clothing or get a professional installer to do it for you. Remember to not insulate under water tanks because it’s a good idea to have a bit of heat underneath them to stop them freezing in winter.

Floor Insulation
Floor insulation is basically filling in any gaps between the skirting boards and floorboards with a sealant. You should also check for any droughts coming through the floorboards. If there are, you could insulate under the floorboards or lay hardboard on top of the boards. Be careful to allow ventilation to the boards or they could rot.

Draught Exclusion
Draughts can lose around fifteen percent of heat through gaps around windows and doors. There is a great variety of draught-proofing materials, which are cheap to buy and widely available.

Double-Glazing
Double-glazing especially when it uses the latest energy efficiency will greatly reduce heat loss from the windows. By giving priority to the rooms you heat most you will obviously save the most money. Secondary glazing is also another option and can be fitted inside existing glass. A low-cost and easy-to-fit alternative method is to tape polythene sheet across the inner window frames. This can be bought from most DIY stores.

Lagging
Lagging the hot water tank and pipes in your home is a smart move because your hot water will stay hot longer.
The most important hot water pipes to insulate are the ones between the boiler and the hot water cylinder. However, all hot water pipes lose heat right away and should be insulated too.

For further energy efficiency steps just keep reading.

Turn the thermostat down on the central heating by 1°C because this can cut up to ten percent off your fuel bills.    wall insulation

Do not put the fridge next to a cooker or boiler and don’t leave the door open for longer than necessary. Avoid putting warm food in the fridge. Defrost regularly.

Do not over- fill the kettle for just one drink only heat the amount of water that you actually need.

Don’t bath because an ordinary shower uses only two-fifths of the hot water needed for a bath.

If you have any dripping taps, fix them quickly. In just one day, a dripping hot water tap can waste the energy and water to fill a hot bath.

Fit a nylon brush seal or a spring flap on the letterbox, and put a cover over the keyhole.

Place reflective foil behind radiators and direct the heat back into the room. Radiator shelves can help keep heat at a low level where it is most needed.

Tackling heat loss in house energy efficiency really can put money into your pocket. Another way is to join the Telecom Plus and slash your monthly bills.

Indonesian wins international prize for river clean-up

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A biologist who enlisted schoolchildren in his fight to clean up an Indonesian river that led to an international prize said he hoped young people will do more for the environment.

Student research into a 41 km stretch of the Surabaya River that flows through Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-largest city, prompted 35-year-old PrigiArisandi into discoveries that helped him become one of six winners of this year’s Goldman Environmental Prize, the world’s largest award for grassroots environmentalists.

Arisandi found that the river, which provides water for three million and is also used for bathing by people living along its banks, was contaminated with high levels of toxic effluent. Recently, mercury levels were found to be 100 times the limit set by the World Health Organization.

He and other activists created the first environmental education program in the region in 2000 to educate local communities about biodiversity and water pollution, teaching students about the dangers and using them to spread the word. “These students are the victims of pollution,”Arisandi told Reuters at his Surabaya office last week. “We place these children as agents of change… We bring them to the river and there are already thousands of children that we have trained.”

Arisandi and other activists have also taken legal action to stop companies from polluting the river and won a case against East Java’s governor, who was ordered to reduce pollution. The $150,000 prize, named after husband and wife philanthropists from San Francisco, honors individuals for sustained efforts to protect the natural environment “often at great personal risk,” according to the prize’s website.

The other 2011 winners are from the United States, Zimbabwe, Germany, Russia and El Salvador.