It's hard to walk out your front door without being pitched the newest "green" product, but it's not always as easy in DC to find companies devoted to beautiful design AND completely eco-friendly procedures. So when we stumbled across DC-based Down to Earth Design Inc. in Scott Sowers' Chesapeake Home article, we knew we'd want to take a closer look at this innovative company which offers not only green structures but also workshops on how to build them yourself. Can you guess what the student-built garden shed above is made of?
Straw...as in scare-crow! One of Down to Earth Design's commonly employed natural building techniques is to cover straw bales in plaster as natural insulation for the walls. Additionally, Sigi Koko, Down to Design's head, and his students constructed a living roof, allowing for vegetation to grow and add to the beauty and functionality of the garden shed. The rustic doors and windows of this idyllic shed are reclaimed from a previous renovation.
In addition to building new structures, they also offer eco-friendly renovations that maximize the natural resources of the site's location (i.e. sunlight and surrounding vegetation,) and incorporate recycled materials such as salvaged tile in gorgeous new mosaic forms.
To learn more about the company, their services, and their (often FREE) workshops, visit their website.
(Images: 1: Chesapeake Home, 2-3: Down to Earth Design)
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Comments (1)
Strawbale homes are one of the fastest growing parts of the green-housing movement. Being made from straw and plaster offers a lot of great benefits:
1) Straw is considered a waste product in many places and millions of bales are burned a year -- this way farmers are able to use it as another cash crop, and the CO2 from burning is kept out of the air
2) Straw is a local product, and the carbon footprint due to transport of materials is far lower than traditional stick frame houses
3) Straw and plaster don't offgas harmful chemicals the way a lot of products used in stick frame houses do
4) Straw (as you said above) has Excellent insulation properties, and the plaster coating is a natural way to control humidity in a house -- many strawbale houses don't need air conditioning, even in very hot states in the South West, and many can be heated with a single masonry heater, or woodburning stove -- utility bills plummet compared with a stick frame.
5) Straw bale houses are naturally pest resistant, fire resistant, and earthquake resistant --- they're gaining a lot of popularity in places like California for this reason. They're not good in flood prone areas, but other than that -- a very good investment risk wise.
6) Straw bale houses are a relatively inexpensive way to build green --- usually costing no more than traditional stick frame houses.
7) Straw bale houses can be made into virtually any style, from a mock-adobe in New Mexico, to a suburban stucco in Pennsylvania, to a quaint cottage in Canada.
8) Straw bale houses have a lot of features that are more expensive to build in traditional stick frame houses --- wide window sills, arched door ways, window seats, niches for art etc.
9) Straw bale houses are owner/builder friendly (hence the classes above)
10) Straw bale houses aren't some new-fangled green-washed technology -- there are straw bale houses in Nebraska that have been standing strong for over a hundred years. You can be confident when you build this way that it really does work. It is a low tech solution that isn't going to be expensive to maintain like some newer forms of green building.
I'm young and won't be able to afford to build my own house for a few years yet, but when I do Strawbales are my first choice.