Straw Bale

Straw bale construction is a building technique that uses compressed bales of straw, an agricultural byproduct of grain crops, as either infill within a structural frame or as a load-bearing wall material in its own right, typically finished with a protective coat of plaster or stucco on both faces. Developed in the Sandhills region of Nebraska in the late nineteenth century, where a shortage of timber and stone left straw as the most abundant local building material, it produces thick walls with strong thermal insulation, and it has seen a revival since the late twentieth century among builders seeking low-cost, low-embodied-energy and renewable construction materials. Properly finished straw bale walls resist fire better than many assume, since the tightly compressed bales have little oxygen available for combustion, but they remain vulnerable to moisture damage and rot if water penetrates the plaster skin.