[Strawbale] Sorry this time plain text, strawbale sound insulation ...

[Peet]

Hello to all strawbalers!

By way of introduction let me say that i am a South-African living in
Rotterdam, doing a study on environmental architecture in Wales (that's a
mouth full). Recently i spent one week building a round garden wall in
strawbale and i thought it was pretty cool to do. The thing that really
caught my attention was the way in which, when standing inside the circle,
the sounds from outside seemed to disappear and if i called out the walls
seem to suck the sound up immediately. Strawbales seem to have good sound
insulating and acoustics qualities and I would like to write a paper on this
subject for my course, only I dont really know where to begin.

If anyone knows of research that has been done or is being done in this
direction could you please let me know. Also, i would like to do some simple
tests of my own to compare the way strawbales behave acoustically compared
to other building materials but i'm not sure how to do this on a decent
scientific way, so once again all advice would be appreciated. Thirdly, (
i'm really drawing it out of you here) if people know about ways that
strawbales are already used for their sound insulation qualities, e.g. in
sound studios and motorway sound barriers, i would be sooo happy to hear
about it.

In return i'm happy to share my findings if anybody is interested.

Thanks for your time,

Peet.