Straw bale houses

[OceanMomma]

We're going to sell our house at the end of the year & move down to the south island. I have seen several large blocks of coastal land that are not only beautiful, but in our price range.

I would love to build an eco home. Straw bale seems like a good plan. I'm going to buy straw bale for colder climates so we can have a look. the h is pretty good at building so that part should not be a problem. What I would really like to hear about is the real cost vs the imagined cost. if ykwim?

Has anyone built their own straw bale home ? How long did it take ? any good pointers ?

I've searched for web resources & so far drawn a blank. any info would be much appreciated.

edited to say: worked out what I was doing wrong with the web search. Once I removed New Zealand from the search parameters I found loads of links.

[serenetabbie]

I read a lot about straw bale houses in Countryside Magazine. I think they may have had an article on alternative building in Mother Earth News too.
There is a book called "Build it with bales" by m. myhrman and s.o. macdonald.

Good luck!!!!

[Slinginmama]

I just saw something about this, try looking up cob (sp) cobb kob, kobb houses and check on HGTV Extreme homes website.

[bebe luna]

I used to live on an organic farm/artists cooperative... we built a straw bail home once! They are awesome! very inexpensive and easy... we rented a stucco sprayer machine to spray the "coating" on the straw bails...
I've also visited a couple others...
What's really neat is you can make the walls almost any shape you want. You can make built-in benches and shelves w/ the bails,etc.
Also such a greay enviromental choice!!!