HOUSE of STRAW

Tue Jan 4 21:26:12 PST 2000

hi Everyone
        Forwarding this article on Strawbale Homes in Santa Barbara, the
architect Jim Bell, Matt Buckmaster and Buynaks are all members of the South
Coast Permaculture Guild. Jim Bell, the architect is responsible for  working
with the owners to find recycled materials and having great patience of
working
with Matt and the Buynaks to get through the County Planning Commision. Also
thanks to Matt Buckmaster and Buynaks for leading the way in our community by
putting their money to promote changes in the way we built and use resources. 
                                        Wes
http://news.newspress.com/lifestyles/straw.htm
<http://news.newspress.com/np_home/fnews.html>

HOUSE of STRAW 

Environmental concerns make hay-bale homes attractive alternatives 

12/26/99

By BEN HELLWARTH 

NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER

<mailto:bhellwarth at newspress.com>bhellwarth at newspress.com

When it's finished early next year, the new Goleta house that Matt Buckmaster
and Jan Vucinich are building will be Santa Barbara's first county-approved
residence made with straw.

It's a construction method that's been used throughout history and was
pioneered in the United States by -- who else? -- pioneers. Once hay baling
machinery gained widespread use in the 1890s, it wasn't long before
homesteaders recognized that the large, solid bales would make ideal building
blocks in the grassy dunes of the Nebraska Sandhills, and other such places
where lumber was scarce.

Now, a century later, with lumber and other resources at a premium, people
like
Buckmaster and Vucinich are among those rediscovering straw bale construction
and embracing the aesthetic and environmental advantages of building a dream
home out of straw.

"For some reason people respond very positively to the medium. It feels good,
it looks good, it feels solid, it looks organic, it even looks European," said
Greg McMillan, co-owner of Straw Dogs, the Atascadero contractors who
consulted
on the Buckmaster-Vucinich home and have built a half-dozen straw bale
residences in San Luis Obispo County and a building at the
Clairborne-Churchill
winery. 

"They're extremely comfortable to live in and extremely quiet. Eighty to 90
percent of the decibel level from outside is absorbed by the walls, by the
straw," said McMillan, who worked eight years ago on California's first legal
straw bale house -- a 2,500-square-foot, three-bedroom, two bath, ranch
headquarters and residence in the Owens Valley.

The sound-proofing qualities of straw were particularly attractive to the
owners in the process of transforming a San Roque house into the first
permitted straw bale residence in the city of Santa Barbara.

"We're within 20 feet of Foothill Road and we wanted to absorb the sound,"
said
Tim Buynak, the managing partner and CEO of Hatch and Parent, the Santa
Barbara
law firm whose new Mediterranean-style office at 1020 State St. won honors for
using environmentally sensitive approaches. "We looked at a lot of different
technologies and architectures and we just decided to try out the straw bale
here because it just seems to be easy and friendly to do."

Besides the sound-proofing, straw bale homes are known for maintaining an even
distribution of heat, and for insular properties that can dramatically reduce
energy bills -- one of the reasons that straw bale construction is now
included
in state building codes.

"This house, when we first bought it, was really hot and noisy. The sound and
noise were big problems to address," said Glorianna Buynak, Tim's wife. Straw
bale construction not only proved to be the most practical and ecological
answer, but the thick, plastered walls would help achieve the French country
look of the remodeled and expanded house.

Several studies, including one by the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, have
confirmed that straw bales provide thermal efficiencies at least three times
greater than conventional building systems. Many bale-home dwellers, in a
variety of climates, have found that they scarcely have to heat or cool their
homes at all.

"My fantasy is to never have to heat this place, but we have to have a heater
for code," Buckmaster said the other day, pointing out the design strategy
behind his modest two-story abode's south-facing windows. The plans call for
tiles to be placed in the adjacent hallways to harness the sun's rays.

The straw also allows a building to breath, like a comfortable leather shoe,
which makes the interior less stuffy than it might be with standard walls. Yet
because the bales are tightly compacted and covered in stucco, they actually
make a home "exceptionally resistant to fire," according to a National
Research
Council of Canada test cited by the U.S. Department of Energy. Not
surprisingly, fire resistance is especially attractive to both Santa Barbara
couples, who have been around long enough to be keenly aware of the area's
historic wildfires and perpetual flammability.

U.S. energy officials also confirm another straw plus: With adequate
safeguards, the bales won't rot and they provide fewer havens for pests, such
as insects and vermin, than conventional wood framing.

Buckmaster, a co-owner of the green-minded Island Seed and Feed store in
Goleta, and his wife, director of the Beit ha'Yeladim Preschool, were
attracted
to all these aspects of straw bale building, as were the Buynaks.

"We want to demonstrate it so other people can do it. It's not that
difficult,"
Buckmaster said. The Buynaks plan to hold an open house, sometime next year
once the bales are installed, to showcase the benefits of straw and other
resource-saving methods.

In addition to straw's structural and environmental appeal, Buckmaster and
Vucinich also found an old-fashioned social value.

"The other thing that became very appealing to me was the community being a
part of the process and being able to involve friends and family who are not
necessarily trained professionals in the building fields," Vucinich said.

During a weekend in early October, several dozen "friends and acquaintances
and
people who heard about it and wanted to be part of it" volunteered to help
stack bales around the Patterson Avenue house's skeletal frame, Buckmaster
said. He and his wife catered the two-day event.

"The best part about it is it's a community effort. There were 30 people
putting up walls that had never done anything like it," said Buckmaster,
38, an
experienced landscaper.

"You put the word out and people show up. Again because of the attraction
people have to the medium," said McMillan, who oversaw the bale stacking.
"There's a whole historical precedent of the barn raising, and people love to
take control of their own shelter needs," he said. "It builds communities very
strongly."

The Santa Barbara couples also liked the idea that the straw they purchased
would have been among the 1 million tons of rice straw burned each fall after
the rice harvests in the Central Valley. The annual burning, soon to be
banned,
creates a major source of air pollution and figured into the California
Legislature's thinking in 1995 when it added straw bale guidelines to the
state
building code.

State lawmakers also sought to promote alternative markets for rice straw and
to nurture the nascent straw bale housing market, pointing out in their
legislation that "rice straw is an annually renewable source of cellulose that
can be used as an energy-efficient substitute for stud-framed wall
construction."

"This is going to be the wave of the future. There's a new consciousness not
only in the United States but throughout the world to have a sustainable
architecture," said Henry Lenny, a member of the city of Santa Barbara's
Landmarks Commission and the architect on an ambitious Los Angeles project to
build a model $4 million public library out of straw bales in the community of
Lake View Terrace.

The bales are especially well-suited to achieving the library's desired
Spanish
colonial revival look, Henry noted, because of the way finished stucco
surfaces
gently swim over the slightly uneven bales underneath -- an effect visible
around the exterior of the Buckmaster-Vucinich house that's reminiscent of the
organic look of adobe.

"It immediately gives you a certain style of traditionalism. Particularly in
California, there's a new renaissance in Hispanic architecture," said Lenny, a
longtime Santa Barbara architect. "So this material kills several birds with
one stone: It provides an aesthetically interesting structure, and it
conserves
energy."

The cost of building with straw is generally comparable to the cost of
building
a conventional custom home, experts say, and in the long run the energy
savings
could add up to a considerable windfall. In jurisdictions unfamiliar with the
straw bale codes, a home builder may encounter some added bureaucratic
friction, but apart from that, the only real drawback seems to be hearing
repeated wisecracks from the uninitiated about the three little pigs and the
big bad wolf. 

Along the way, Santa Barbara's straw pioneers have discovered some techniques
that enhance their dwellings' environmentally friendly attributes, such as the
use of a nontoxic, fireproof and longer-lasting alternative to conventional
Fiberglass home insulation called Air Krete. Made by a company in Weedsport,
N.Y., the product consists largely of air, water and cement. It goes into wall
and ceiling cavities like shaving cream, then hardens into a stable foam. Some
of the principals in the two Santa Barbara straw bale projects were so
impressed with the product that they formed a partnership that will soon make
Air Krete available through Buckmaster's store.

The Buynaks are working with architect Jim Bell and contractor Dirk McKnight,
both of Santa Barbara. Bell also drew up the blueprints for Buckmaster and
Vucinich, and another Santa Barbara contractor, Joe Sevilla, is doing the
building. But Buckmaster, a UCSB alum who once worked for the Isla Vista Park
and Recreation District, and his wife have sought to cut their costs by taking
on a number of tasks themselves since the foundation for their single-bedroom,
1,400-square-foot home was poured last February.

Perhaps most notable in the couple's efforts to make their home an example of
sustainable architecture has been their reuse of old wood and fixtures. They
began by carefully dismantling one of the turn-of-the-century sheds on their
1.5-acre property on North Patterson Avenue. The 400-square-foot structure,
and
the cavernous barn that still stands, date back to the days when the Goleta
Walnut Co. got started on a portion of the 1,000-acre ranch then owned by the
New York developer J.

D. Patterson. Virtually all the shed's redwood boards and battens were
incorporated into the new house, which not only saved on wood but added rustic
touches that match the old barn.

"All I took to the dump was the old shingle roof," Buckmaster said.

The recycling effort also went far beyond the property line. There are
literally scraps from all over Santa Barbara built in to the house. There are
leftover two-by-fours from, fittingly, the remodeling of the Environmental
Defense Center headquarters. About 50 or 60 board feet came from an old barn
that was torn down to make way for the Rancho San Marcos Golf Course. A
smattering of two-by-eights were gleaned from another Montecito project.

In retrospect, Buckmaster's only regret is that he couldn't devote more
time to
rounding up old wood.

"There's a huge supply of it and it's a shame because it all goes to the
landfill, and we talk about our landfill problems," he said, estimating
that up
to a third of his house could have been constructed of old wood, rather than
the much smaller fraction he was able to collect.

Many of his windows, although like new, had been torn out of a Montecito home
where the owner wanted to create more wall space for displaying artwork. The
Buynaks, too, were able to reuse windows and will be employing other
environmentally-minded techniques in their home.

An old bathroom sink was among the fixtures that Buckmaster spared a trip to
the dump, but perhaps the greatest coup was salvaging the heavy doors taken
out
during the remodeling of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Still stenciled on
the glass are the words "Museum Store Entrance" and "Not an Exit."

Buckmaster and Vucinich don't intend to remove the signs, but by March, when
they move from an old trailer into the county's first straw bale house, the
doors will serve as both entrance and exit.

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