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Yeah, domes can be a pain to live in if you don't make them tall enough to have "normal" wall heights on the perimeter, or if you don't put on a dome roof on a standard vertical wall. Plus the acoustics can be a little much for some people to deal with if they leave their dome open (unceilinged) and vaulted.
Building Codes? What's that? We don't have them out here in the Borough. I believe that "Build in the Normal Manner" is the phrase most applicable. Build it how you want to - it's going to be your house. Financers may look at the project differently, but that has little to do with Borough codes.
I'll stand by my first statement: Alaskans, especially in the interior, are a very unconventional lot. If it (strawbale, dome, corewood, adobe) were a good idea, they'd be everywhere.
The rectangle rules for a reason, and it has nothing to do with a reluctance to embrace unconventional building practices.
Wow, you only have 4 piers supporting your structure! I think we might be over-engineering ours LOL!
Did you wrap your bales with plastic, or did you allow them to breathe? I've been getting conflicting info about the vapor barrier and housewrap that is recommended for building up there. I know that Jose and Helen meticulously wrapped theirs inside and out, but all the strawbale pros say that could actually cause your bales to rot by trapping moisture in the bales and it's better to plaster them really well instead. I just don't know if the Interior has a long enough drying cycle to compensate for any vapor permeation through the wall during the cold season.
Do you think you would have run into the same convection and heat loss problems if you had plastered the walls rather than using lap and drywall on furring strips?
What do you mean by "serious house"? One that's supposed to last under constant use, or a big fancy one?
We did not wrap our bales with plastic. Jose and Helena did? I don't recall that. Do you really mean wrapped in plastic inside and out or do you mean housewrap? We have a completely (well, to the best of our ability) sealed vapor barrier on the inside and house wrap on the outside. Neither membrane was put directly in contact with the bales, but rather attached to the furring strips. So, we believe that any moisture that might make its way into the wall from the inside could, given a strong enough gradient (that's the key point, here, I think) make its way to the outside. We never got around to installing moisture meters. Would like to do that sometime.
I am certain we would not have had the convective heat loss if we had plastered both sides. There's no air chamber that way, clearly. At the time, and even now, plastering seemed like much too big an effort. And everyone else we knew doing SB was hesitant to plaster given the temperature extremes. At about the time we left Fairbanks, J&H were plastering a SB garage. I don't know how that has fared.
My 'serious' comment. Yeah, I don't know. I still really like the idea of SB. I wouldn't do it again unless I could build on a poured foundation underlain by stable ground. And I would either plaster or put the bales up tight against a sheathed wall, which is what J&H and the other builder in our neighborhood did. But I also think you don't get the full benefit of the bales unless you plaster the outside as well, or cut down the heat loss at the exterior interface in some way. It's just that I see SB as such a cool alternative to wood that if you build an SB building in a way that still uses a lot of wood, then, is it worth it?
4 points of foundation contact: yup. I still really like our foundation. We used two 30' I-beams that were probably overkill for the load, but actually reasonably priced at the time. Pretty easy to deal with.
We are actually in the process of selling our cabin. Two potential buyers have been unable to find a bank to finance a loan. (Turns out that SB is non-conforming to all of those 'non-conforming' clauses.) So, we will probably owner finance it. Something to keep in mind.
Yes, I meant installing a <1 perm plastic vapor barrier inside and a housewrap on the outside of the bale wall. I've just been reading so much about how that is a very bad idea because it ends up trapping moisture in the SB a lot of the times. According to the pros, you do want the wall to accept vapor permeation, in both directions so that any moisture that does get in the wall (and it always will!) has a way to get back out. I was just wondering if the extreme cold in the winter and the not so hot summers in AK would allow normal wicking/evaporative drying of plaster-straw-plaster walls. Unfortunately, you can't plaster over the plastic sheeting, so I'd have to choose one method or the other. Considering the length of time it takes lime/clay plasters to cure properly, that might be a gating factor in AK as well since you can't let the plaster freeze until it has completely dried/cured which can be up to a month if it's not dry (doesn't have to be hot, just above freezing and dry). Plus plastering is a lot of work compared to hanging up some paneling or drywall... that also eats a lot of time in the 100 frost free days. You'd almost have to be ready to start plastering right after it warms up in order for it to be completed (several layers thick) and safely cured before winter sets back in again.
I think the brittleness in extreme cold would really only apply to cement-based plasters. My Norwegian cousin's house and barn are covered in lime plaster and lime wash, and those buildings are over 400 years old... require very little maintenance, just limewash every few years. A lime-clay plaster would probably be just fine as well. Cement-based plasters and stuccos never stood up to the cold in my experience, and none of the plasticizers they add to it work well in the cold either. So I think the reall question comes down to whether the natural "breathability" of the SB & plaster is enough to allow the walls to dry out from any vapor permeation and condensation in the winter. Since both straw and lime/clay plasters are hygroscopic, they can permeate and safely store relatively large amounts of water and wick it back out of the wall surface when humidity and temperature changes occur. Since the Interior is relatively arid, I would think that moisture would readily wick to the exterior even in temperatures that were only just above freezing. But the most important things would be to make sure we had good overhangs to keep the rain and snow off the walls and that the plaster created a seamless air barrier because that's where the worst of the moisture problems occur (not necessarily the natural vapor permeation).
We don't plan to ever sell our home, so hopefully will never have to deal with banks non-conforming non-conformaties. I also checked with my insurance company, and several others and no one is willing to insure our buildings that far out in the nowhere... so it doesn't matter if we build with alternative materials or not apparently. We'll following the IBC and local recommendations as much as applies to our situation... always err on the side of caution and that sort of thing
We'd definitely want to put the moisture meters in if we did go the plaster route. One good thing about planning to build a post & beam frame, as much as it would suck, we could replace the SB infill walls without having to completely rebuild if there did end up being a moisture or heat loss problem.
Building Codes? What's that? We don't have them out here in the Borough. I believe that "Build in the Normal Manner" is the phrase most applicable. Build it how you want to - it's going to be your house. Financers may look at the project differently, but that has little to do with Borough codes.
I'll stand by my first statement: Alaskans, especially in the interior, are a very unconventional lot. If it (strawbale, dome, corewood, adobe) were a good idea, they'd be everywhere.
The rectangle rules for a reason, and it has nothing to do with a reluctance to embrace unconventional building practices.
Well we dont have building code, permits, regulations or inspections in our neck of the woods, but we still want to build as much to IBC and local recommendations as applicable. Since we aren't planning to finance the build, the banks are out of the picture, too.
I don't necessarily agree that just because something isn't common automatically means it's a bad idea. A lot of houses are built with what's on hand, what the builder has experience with or can find resources for, and what goes up the easiest/fastest. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that approach and I've built one house that way already.
Rectangles and flat surfaces provided by hewn timber or dimensional lumber definitely make quick work of joining members together and hopefully getting a stable surface with no leaks. I'm not arguing with that at all. Most people don't have the time, skill, knowledge or motivation to dink around doing reverse-coped custom mortise and tenon joints on irregular posts and beams when it takes just a few minutes to toenail a 2x4. It's the uniformity and replicability of rectilinear shapes that make them the building shape of choice... because they are mathematically structurally weaker than a circle, dome, arch, pyramid or cone (especially if they are monolithic as opposed to skeletal).
Actually, DH is the Engineer... I'm just the Architect/Designer We'll have a structural engineer double-check our plans and math just to be on the safe side though.
I used to work construction (conventional) and have helped out on some alternative builds. I love researching all these different building methods because I actually have hands-on practical knowledge of the concepts. If you're into that sort of thing, there's usually a safe way around an apparent obstacle and it can be fun (if labor intensive) to figure it out. I certainly don't think less of anyone who doesn't enjoy that sort of thing and just wants to get their four walls and roof up as quickly as possible.
Yes, I meant installing a <1 perm plastic vapor barrier inside and a housewrap on the outside of the bale wall. I've just been reading so much about how that is a very bad idea because it ends up trapping moisture in the SB a lot of the times. According to the pros, you do want the wall to accept vapor permeation, in both directions so that any moisture that does get in the wall (and it always will!) has a way to get back out.
Right, but from the literature we had available when we built, we generally got the idea (and everyone we talked to agreed) that, especially if we weren't going to plaster our walls, it would be a very good idea to use a vb on the inside. And on the outside, I don't think the housewrap blocks much moisture, I mean, it's not designed to block vapor. In our case particularly, with the wrap set off an inch from the bale wall, the wall should be able to breathe. We installed the housewrap as a measure against liquid water that might get through the siding, not as a vapor retarder. In our case, I still think a vb on the inside was the way to go. Now, when we finally do some kind of moisture test, I might change my mind, but until then....
But, this belabors the point. The point of an appropriate sustainable building style for the Alaskan interior. Straw is an expensive and resource intensive agricultural crop. And can you mix your plaster from materials onsite? Not in most places. Trees are sustainable and strong, but not very insulative. Sod? maybe, the old Icelandic style of a foundation and knee wall build of stone and then finished off with sod and a viga-supported roof could be appropriate in some places, but Alaskan sod probably doesn't regnerate as quickly as it does in Iceland or Scandinavia in general. No, my friends, I believe packed earth is the answer. That, or having a thick deposit of loess that you can dig a south-facing burrow into, like the Hobbit Hole down in Rosey Creek. I know two people who have rented that place and they said it stayed warm in the winter like no other structure they could think of.
Well, good luck to you, however you decide to build. This is one of the great things about Alaska; that people feel free to try different building techniques. On that topic, I recommend "Building From Within" by Joan Kopenen, if you don't already know it. It's interviews with Fairbanks area people who built their own places in the late 70's/early 80's. Funny and interesting.
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We'll have a structural engineer double-check our plans and math just to be on the safe side though.
