[Scpg] New Strawbale Book Slide Show &Book Tour with Catherine Wanek Oct 26-Nov16 Ca Arizona

[Wesley Roe and Marjorie Lakin Erickson]

New Strawbale Home Book by Catherine Wanek .Oct 14 Update
Dates for Book Signing and Slide Show Oct 26-Nov 16 2003
Laguna Beach Sun Oct 26 Wells Fargo Bank on 260 Ocean 6:00 social hour talk 
at 7:00 -9 PM $3-$5 donation DrRoley at aol.com 949-494-5843
San Diego Mon Oct 27 Alliant International University 858-635-4616 times 
location not confirmed
San Diego Tues Oct 28 6:30 pm NEW SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE 1249 F Street in 
down town S.D. ,Reception 6pm , Drew Hubbell 619 231-0446
LA Wed Oct 29 7pm LA- Eco-Village 117 Bimini Place, LA, CA 90004 Sliding 
scale $3 - $10 (323) 662-5207
Meiners Oak Thurs Oct 30 5pm Dinner with Catherine at the Farmer and the 
Cook (near Ojai) 339 W El Roblars 805-640-9608 (reservations)
Ojai Thurs Oct 30 Oak Grove School 7pm 220 W. Lomita Ave, Meiners Oak (805) 
646-8236 X 104 ellenhall at oakgroveschool.com $3-$10 sliding Scale
Ojai Fri Oct 31 rest, visit to first strawbale in Ventura County
Santa Barbara Sat Nov 1 7pm S.B.Public Library Faulkner Gallery E Anapamu 
$3 donation sbpcnet at silcom.com 805-962-2571
Santa Barbara Sun Nov 2 6:30pm pm Livingreen Store 222 Helena for 
Architects,Planners and Builders 805-962-2571
SLO Mon Nov 3 Cal Poly SLO Hearst Lecture, 7pm at Business School Rotunda 
University of Calpoly SLO , 805-756-2490.
Santa Cruz Tues Nov 4  7pm Louden Nelson Community Center 7pm  301 Center 
St. (at Laurel) $3-5 Donation Josho 831-427-3311
Berkeley Wed Nov 5 Builders Booksource 7:30pm 1817 Fourth Street (510) 
845-6874 www.buildersbooksource.com
San Francisco Thurs Nov 6 7pm METREON: A Sony Entertainment Center 101 
Fourth Street at Mission Second Floor in the Action Theatre 
http://www.metreon.com $3-$8 sliding scale No one turned away for lack of funds
San Francisco Sat/Sun Nov 7&8 Green Festival  www.greenfestivals.com 
Concourse Exhibition Center
Santa  Rosa Mon Nov 10 7pm New School North Bay Campus 99 Sixth Street, 
Santa Rosa $5 donation dbaker at newcollege.edu 707 568-2605
Occidental Tues Nov 11 7pm Occidental Arts and Ecology Center 15290 Coleman 
Valley Road.Donation $5  www.oaec.org Brock Dolman 707-874-1557 x 206 
Brock at oaec.org
Arcata Wed Nov 12 7 pm The Common House at Marsh Commons Cohousing 101 
South G St Arcata CCAT - (707)826-3551 or ccat at humboldt.edu Donation $5 no 
one turned away
Ashland Fri Nov 14 cancelled,
Prescott Arizona , Sat Nov 15 proposed details to follow
Tucson Arizona Sunday Nov 16 ? Originate Natural Building Materials 
Showroom 526 N. Ninth Avenue, 520-792-4207
natasha at originateNBM.com.



Book Tour is organized by Santa Barbara Permaculture Network 
www.sbpermaculture.org sbpcnet at silcom.com please contact us if you need any 
further info on the tour and visit Catherine's Wanek's Website at 
www.strawbalecentral.com to find more about her work .       Posters for 
the various locations can be Downloaded (PDF File) and printed  from 
http://www.islandseed.com/scpg.html to post in your community to help 
support the Book Tour.

Cosponsored by Hopedance Magazine www.hopedance.org ,South Coast 
Permaculture Guild, San Diego Permaculture Center, Ojai Permaculture Guild, 
Central Coast Permaculture Guild, Santa Cruz Permaculture Guild, Occidental 
Arts and Ecology Center , Livingreen Store Santa Barbara , The 
Sustainability Project, Santa Barbara Organic Garden Club, Permaculture 
Institute of Southern California, Earthflow Design Network 
www.earthflow.com, David Bainbridge,The League of California Homeowners, 
Ecohome Network, LA Eco-village, CCAT (The Campus Center for Appropriate 
Technology) & the Marsh Commons Arcata, Urban Permaculture Guild
www.urbanpermacultureguild.org and the SF Design 
Museum  www.meandra.org/geninfo/visitorinfo.htm,New College of California 
EcoDwelling Program, College of Architecture and Environmental 
Design/Hearst Lecture Series SLO , Sustainable Building Council of San Luis 
Obispo, NEW SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE San Diego , The Oak Grove School Ojai, 
Builders Booksource, Originate Natural Building Materials Showroom Tucson, 
Arizona,

Special Thanks to all the grassroot organizers  in all the communities who 
have  helped to set up the Book Tour on a local level, and to Eric 
Werbalowsky webmaster Island Seed and Feed for Download PDF posters and all 
the amazing work he does for the book tours , Barbara Wishingrad longtime 
helper/webmaster for Santa Barbara Permaculture Network, Steve Sprinkel 
Farmer and the Cook Restaurant !!!!what an amazing volunteer network !!!!
Also Molly Douma of Gibbs-Smith, Publisher's rep for Catherine's Book 
great, great support

Author and photographer Catherine Wanek organized the building of a strawb
ale greenhouse in 1992 and has been an advocate ever since. She produced and
directed the Building with Straw video series and spent five years publishing
and editing The Last Straw Journal. The coauthor of The Art of Natural 
Building,
she lives in Kingston, New Mexico. Check out her Webpage at 
www.strawbalecentral.com

Building with Bales has begun to enter the mainstream yet many people still 
wonder, what does a strawbale house look like? Catherine Wanek's new book 
The New Strawbale Home provides the answer, anything you want! Innovative 
architects & owner/builders are reinventing this century-old technology to 
create thick-walled modern houses of surpassing beauty, that also save 
energy and are healthy for its inhabitants and the environment.

This practical book compiles floor plans and images from forty cutting-edge 
homes across North America, discussing varying climate considerations & 
essential design details. Chapters include information on budget matters, 
code compliance, siting & energy efficiency, structural systems, & 
finishing touches. It also offers valuable insights & hindsights of 
architects, contractors & owner/builders, and a extensive resource section.

Author, photographer and filmaker Catherine Wanek is a pioneer in the 
strawbale movement. She published & edited The Last Straw Journal, 
co-authored The Art of Natural Building, and produced & directed the video 
series Building with Straw. She also helped co-found the non-profit 
Builders Without Borders. (website, which one?)

Introduction
A WONDERFUL IRONY about strawbale home owners is that they often started out
as complete skeptics. "Doesn't it rot? Doesn't it burn? What about the Big
Bad Wolf?" We converts who've heard this before have learned to smile
patiently. After all, it was little more than a decade ago that modern-day 
pioneers
seeking affordable, ecological, beautiful housing built the first 
code-approved
strawbale homes. Now they are found in every state in the United States and 
all
over the world.
It's not surprising that so many have been won over by the amazing
potential of the humble bale. Individually, stalks of straw seem fragile, but
hundreds together, compressed and baled, make a sturdy building block. Stack a
bunch of these blocks together and walls can go up in a hurry. Roof and 
plaster
it, and you have an energy-efficient house-the concept is simple and 
attractive.
Plus, soft, sculptable straw bales can be shaped into cozy spaces, forming a
home that feels like an embrace.
This home not only feels good, but you can feel good about it; straw is
commonly underutilized-composted or burned as an agricultural waste product.
The "staff" of the staff of life, straw is available at a cheap price
wherever grain is grown. Replacing conventional "stick frame" walls with 
bales can
cut by half the amount of timber needed in a modern home, reducing demand on
forest resources. And stacked like giant bricks to form a thick wall, bales 
offer
super insulation from the heat, cold and outside noise, providing a quiet,
comfortable living space with modest lifetime energy requirements.
Building with bales could also impact global warming by significantly
reducing fossil fuel consumption. And saving fuel saves money. Strawbale home
owners from New Mexico to Nova Scotia, California to China, live 
comfortably with
energy bills that are a fraction of their neighbors'.
Constructed with care, these homes have successfully
endured snow and rain, earthquakes and hurricanes.

Historical Precedents
Building with bales began over a century ago as pioneers began to settle in
the sand hills of Nebraska. Finding themselves in a sea of grass on a treeless
prairie, they utilized the relatively new technology of horse-powered baling
machines to create a stable building block from an abundant local resource. By
simply stacking up interlocking bales and plastering them with mud or cement
stucco to create sturdy homes, the pioneers saved their precious trees for 
roof
structures. But as soon as railroads came through, bringing brick and timber
and other supplies, Nebraskans began building "real" homes, and strawbale
houses faded into history.
Enough examples of strawbale construction survive, however, to give
modern builders evidence of durability and confidence in the structural 
stability
of bales.

The Strawbale Revival
While the occasional strawbale building went up in the intervening decades,
it was in the 1970s and 1980s that homesteaders , permaculturists and
alternative builders, motivated by the potential for affordable and 
sustainable
shelter, began rediscovering the concept of building with bales. The 
movement may
have begun in 1989 in Oracle, Arizona, when Matts Myhrman, Judy Knox, Bill
Steen, David Bainbridge and Pliny Fisk got together at James Kahn's house to
stack some bales, try some plaster mixes, and test the stability of 
load-bearing
bale walls.
This led to more research and experimentation and a journal called The
Last Straw, which began gathering information from old and new strawbale
pioneers, publishing techniques and success stories, and fostering 
communication and
cooperation. 'Within a few years, advocates in both Arizona and New Mexico
were lobbying their building-code departments for permits to build bale
buildings. They also initiated testing programs to prove the durability of 
the emerging
technology.
By 1993, unplastered, load-bearing, three-string bale wall systems had
successfully passed compression, transverse load and racking sheer tests in
Tucson, Arizona. And in Albuquerque, New Mexico, plastered, load-bearing, 
two-tie
wall systems withstood a simulated 100-plus miles-per-hour wind force and a
two-hour ASTM 119 fire test. The surprised lab technicians reasoned that
straw resists combustion when compressed into bales and sealed with plaster
because the fire is starved of oxygen. These laboratory results qualify a 
plastered
strawbale wall for a commercial fire rating.
The impressive results of these testing programs helped persuade cautious
code officials, and in 1994, Tucson and Pima County, Arizona, adopted a
"prescriptive standard" for load-bearing bale construction, while in New 
Mexico,
state officials okayed strawbale building guidelines for post-andbeam
structures with straw bales as infill. For better or for worse, these two 
codes now
form the basis of most permitted structures in the United States.
The positive effect of having building codes in place is that they
legitimize bales as a building material. Their negative effect is to limit 
building
techniques that can be employed. "While strawbale engineering and practices
have evolved since 1994, codes have generally remained overly restrictive.
Fortunately, a section in most codes allows for "alternative building 
materials and
methods" and gives local code officials fairly broad authority to approve
designs that meet standards of health and safety. And in many code 
jurisdictions
across America, strawbale homes have already received building permits, which
paves the way for more bale houses in the future.
During the last decade, advocates have developed book, video and Internet
resources for learning about strawbale construction, and helping to educate
building officials.
Straw-building associations in New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, California and
the Midwest offer professional advice and hands-on workshops (see 
Resources). In
California, architects, engineers and politicians recently hammered out the
most progressive code language yet, and a state-funded testing program
administered by the Environmental Building Network will soon answer more 
structural
questions and offer insight into the relative strength of earthen plasters.

A Home for All Climates
In the meantime, architects and builders have successfully adapted strawbale
designs to local climates, from the desert Southwest to the rainforests of
the Pacific. The few thousand strawbale homes built in North America in the
last decade are generally proving to be durable and comfortable. Strawbale's
user-friendly construction techniques can also empower tentative 
owner/builders
to get involved with building their own dream homes.
This is also a house that considers seven generations. Unlike most
manufactured building materials, straw is very low in "embodied energy"- the
energy required to harvest, process and deliver a material to market. 
Combined with
solar orientation, natural plasters, daylighting, and appropriate
ventilation, a strawbale home blends energy efficiency and aesthetics with 
a healthy
indoor environment. It seems that this new/old building technology is 
poised to
enter mainstream consciousness.
So, what does a strawbale house look like? The answer is truly-whatever
you want. From southwestern Santa Fe style, to north-country alpine 
approaches,
to sleek urban designs, today's architects and owner/builders are thinking
beyond the box and shaping bale structures in response to climate and regional
traditions and to suit their personal aesthetic preferences. Look within these
pages to discover a wide spectrum of design ideas, plus building insights and
hindsights from all across North America. The preferred house of the
twenty-first century just might be a strawbale home.
The New
Strawbale Home
BUILDING WITH BALES has begun to enter the
mainstream, yet many people still wonder, "What
does a strawbale house look like?" The New
Strawbale Home provides the answer, which is truly, "anything you want!"
Innovative architects and owner/builders are reinventing this century-old
technology to create thick-walled modern houses of surpassing beauty. Their 
initial
choice often stems from the desire to build an ecological and healthy home, 
and
the result also saves on energy bills and encourages personal creativity.
The New Strawbale Home compiles floor plans and images from forty
cutting-edge homes across North America, from California to Quebec, New 
Mexico to New
England. It showcases a spectrum of regional styles and personal aesthetic
choices,
including urban homes that enhance their neighborhoods, home office
solutions, family havens, country homes and hideaways.
This practical book also discusses varying climate considerations and
essential design details for problem-free construction and low maintenance.
Chapters include information on budget matters, code compliance, siting and 
energy
efficiency, structural systems, and finishing touches. The New
Strawbale Home also offers valuable insights and
hindsights of architects, contractors, and owner/ builders, plus an extensive
resource section.
Author and photographer Catherine Wanek organized the building of a strawb
ale greenhouse in 1992 and has been an advocate ever since. She produced and
directed the Building with Straw video series and spent five years publishing
and editing The Last Straw Journal. The coauthor of The Art of Natural 
Building,
she lives in Kingston, New Mexico.


wes

The New Strawbale Home Catherine Wanek Publisher Cost 39.95 Gibbs Smith
(Excerpt from the newly published book with permission by Gibbs Smith the 
publisher from Introduction )