Welcome to Sustainable Works
Building with Bales since 1995Sustainable Works is a British Columbia based sole proprietorship involved in education and implementation of basic ecological land use principles. Our work has been as far afield as New South Wales, Australia, Maui, Hawaii, as well as throughout B.C, western Canada and the northwestern United States.
The resource issues surrounding affordable low impact housing are numerous and widely discussed. One simple proven technology is plastered straw bale construction. Its main advantages are low cost, energy efficiency with super insulated walls which are typically R-35 or better, the use of an annually renewable resource, healthy "breathing walls" without vapour barriers which can hold volatile organic compounds within a building, a two hour fire rating confirmed in two separate international tests, and resistance to earthquakes.
These issues and the engineered prescribed building code standards for plastered straw bale construction form the basic topics covered in our seminars and workshops.
Straw bale construction began at the turn of the century in the Sandhills region of Nebraska. Homesteaders lacked both trees and sods to build their homes so they used their recently invented balers to produce meadow hay bales to stack as wall material. The bales were laid like bricks, pinned together with wood stakes and the roof was built directly on the walls. The weight of the roof compressed the walls during a one-month settling period. After the walls stabilized in height, the builders plastered the walls with adobe, lime plaster or cement stucco. This is the traditional Nebraska or load bearing method of straw bale construction that flourished in this region until the 1940's when it was replaced by stud frame building.
In the early 1980's, builders in Quebec and New Mexico began to experiment with baled fibre construction. Early testing indicated plastered two string straw bale walls had an R-value of 35, nearly twice that of a conventional stud wall and fire tests demonstrated a far better performance than would be required for commercial buildings.
Recent Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation research in bale wall moisture and pre-compression of load bearing walls has attracted international attention. In 1995, Fibrehouse Ltd. in Ottawa, received a grant to test their air bag method of compressing load bearing walls. The result is a stressed skin system which lab tests determined can resist seven times the Canadian hurricane requirement for wind loads and 2.7 times the vertical load requirements for two story homes in most parts of Canada. In 1996, Don Fugler, Senior Researcher at the CMHC, acquired the funding for a study that lead to the design of two simple bale wall moisture sensors that researchers use to keep track of the seasonal variations of moisture in the "breathable" straw bale walls. The moisture sensor research and the Fibrehouse air bag pre-compression system are important parts of Sustainable Works activities to promote simple, safe, and affordable low impact housing.
Sustainable Works was contracted by CMHC for two research studies, on bale wall moisture (Dec.1999) and thermal energy efficiency (April 2002).
We offer a full range of services for the owner builder with design and building permit application consultations, methods and materials based on up to date international research and testing, load bearing and non load bearing bale wall raisings and stucco spraying work parties.
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