All Entries Tagged With: "Moisture"

Sill Pan Design Detail – TLS #51

Included in TLS #49 (Myths and Realities, Spring 2005) was a discussion of ways to deal with moisture at the bottom of windows. David Eisenberg shared a written design detail for a pan under the window to carry water away from rather than down the wall. We wanted to share a drawing of this detail and David kindly provided one for us [...]

Basics and Benefits of the Use of Straw Bales for Building

This article does not appear in The Last Straw and is original content.
Prepared by Joyce Coppinger, Managing Editor/Publisher, The Last Straw Journal
402.483.5135, <thelaststraw@thelaststraw.org> www.thelaststraw.org

INSULATION
The R-value used for straw-bale walls is R-30. Most conventional stick-built construction has an R-value of around 15 with as high as R-30 in ceilings.
Testing under controlled conditions allows the researcher to [...]

Where to Draw the Line – TLS #50

This article appeared in TLS #50.
by Chris Newton – Queensland, Australia
Can you design and build straw-bale homes for a hot and humid climate? Living in Queensland, Australia, I am frequently asked to identify an invisible line on the map where “she’ll be right” applies on one side of the line and “don’t go there” [...]

Finishing Bale Walls with Siding – TLS #57

This article appeared in TLS #57.
Loose Strings: Technical Discussions
by Jeff Ruppert – Colorado, USA
T e c h T i p s
A little known fact in the bale building realm is that a handful of people scattered across different continents have experimented with the idea of finishing their bale walls with wood or some type of [...]

Build Your Own Simple Bale Wall Moisture Sensor – TLS #57

This article appears in issue #57 of TLS.  There have been other articles about moisture sensors in recent years.
by Habib John Gonzalez – British Columbia, Canada
This article appeared in a slightly longer version in TLS#22/Spring 1998.
Here are the simple steps and materials needed to build your own bale wall moisture sensor:
1. Determine what depth of [...]

Window Sill Details

This is a bonus post showing a couple examples of window sills on bale walls.  Both examples incorporate a drip kerf for shedding water away from the wall.  The first example below is on a Nebraska-Style structure in Colorado and the second example is in Siberia from our 2005 trip.
Here is a detail of a [...]