this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2024
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I've seen hay bales catch fire from being too wet, no way I'm building a house out of that.
Yeah, same as wood, who would build houses out of that? /s
Hay is great insulation and it's sealed with protective material anyway in modern houses. Also, even if not: Some tribes make houses out of hay or straw and those houses are quite great in their particular circumstances. There are experiments to use hay bales for structural support as well and it holds up surprisingly well.
Also, fun fact: wooden houses are less dangerous in case of fire than houses made of steel and concrete because the steel rod reinforcements start becoming soft at low temperatures (~200°C) and crash. Wooden houses announce crashing when burning, concrete buildings don't.
Something something jet fuel...
I knew it!
How does that work? Too wet with kerosene?
The moisture and organic material causes mold and bacteria to form and create heat. Because hay is a good insulator, heat will build up more and more. Once the hay gets to a certain temperature flammable gases are formed and can combust from the heat.
And as the heat raises, it becomes perfect for other bacterias, which start to multiply too, increasing more the heat
Sun goes through droplet of water. Focuses beam. Burns the highly flammable straw.
Straw is compressed in the walls, so not to let oxygen go through, and it doesn't get wet as the wall is covered with clay inside and outside.
But the moisture content of the straw matters BEFORE it gets sealed. A stack of a thousand damp bales can heat and combust. And it's the interior damp bales that heat and start the fire.
They can get wet waiting for transport to the jobsite, they can get wet during transportation, and they can get wet during building.
I'm not saying a strawbale house can't be well built, but it's not a "one size fits all" solution for every location.
Yes, of course it has to be dry.
And that is the trick isn't it. A piece of wood gets rained on, it isn't effected much if at all. When the sun comes out, it dries in less than an hour. But bales are much like sponges, they soak up water easily and dry out very, very, very slowly.
Just how much do you try the average construction crew to keep those bales dry on a job site?
Building clay-and-straw houses is not suitable for mass construction, I guess.
You could say you need to live on the site :)
It is on par with building a ground up stick house. Sure it doesn't beat any kind of prefab or cook cutter houses. But neither does any other method.
No they probably aren't suitable for mass use. But, for one-offs they can be viable choices if you get a high quality contractor and construction crew that knows what is needed to build the structure correctly.
The ones I saw were built by volunteers :D
Were they volunteers from the local pub?
No, from international civic service.
So people who were highly motivated to do things right. And not your average contracting crew that needs to do the work as cheaply and fast as possible and get to the next job quickly.
Well your average construction crew doesn't build straw bale houses. The three I worked on it was a thing of real concern. We keep the bails covered before they were stacked. We would let the pile breathe during the day and cover at night. We would only stack a wall when we knew it would get finished and have the top cover on before the end of the day. And the exterior was sealed very early where the interior sealing was one of the last things to happen.
The point is the, the "average" construction crews build the vast majority of structures around the world. And you are correct - they aren't qualified.