The Ashland School of Environmental Education in Oregon has come up with a new way of building with straw. The Strawjet is a apparatus that creates straw cable. This cable has many uses; one of which is a new building material. They have created a product called StrawCore that can be used for structural building members. StrawCore is a 4 x 4 blocks of 4 straw cables covered in a cob-like & papercrete finish. They can be constructed into small or large panels. It’s a pre-made wall system constructed from environmentally benign materials. They are working on prototypes for building construction.

www.greeninventor.org »

Bale Bags are as versatile as tuct tape. They are good meanwhile stuffing. I’m not sure about them being used in a permanent way… but they sure come in handy as quick wall fill. They can go into a wall quickly while the cob is being made… or over the course of the winter. I used these in my north wall with some light-clay to fill the cracks. It was better than nothing. I wonder if they would work as insulation in a attic?

If nothing else they hold straw all your loose straw and are great to sit on!

Straw is the dry stalk of a cereal plant, after the nutrient grain or seed has been removed. Straw makes up about half of the yield of a cereal crop such as wheat, oats, rye or barley.

In times gone by, it was regarded as a useful by-product of the harvest, but with the advent of the combine harvester, straw has become more of a burden, almost a nuisance to farmers. Chemically straw is composed mostly of cellulose and lignin, the same major components of wood. A wall built with straw bales can have a R- value somewhere between 40 to 50.