[Strawbale]Ideas

[Alex]

Rene

To answer one or two of your points, first off it's not actually that big, I
think it might be designworkshop's perspectives as you're not the first
person to say it. believe me it's about average house size.

To answer the why strawbales ? The idea is to use bales as "infill" style
walls, non load bearing with a post and beam construction. This is partly
for thermal efficiency in winter, partly also for environmental reasons,
with strawbales being sustainable unlike concrete blocks, and partly cos
with that much glass I had to  find some way of cost cutting anyway.

The glass itself is Pilkington K glass which gets round the problems of the
house over heating in summer, and should hopefully prevent over cooling in
winter.

As for the roof it's supported round the outside on vertical pillars - one
on each corner with two further pillars per side (12 in all) In fact the
roof structure itself is the one thing I'm really clued up on as there are
already three similar roofs in my area (two on car showrooms and one on a
workshop) all are quite light weight steel and aluminium constructions, the
two on the showrooms are that bit heavier as they're insulated (as mine will
be too). One of the showrooms has an 85 feet approx 26 metres span supported
only at the two side edges with no in between verticals at all and no
horizontal beams to prevent spreading it is literally an arc !!!

I think I've probably answered my queries now, and as it's going to be
free-standing with bale infill the structural integrity shouldn't be a
problem.

Alex


----- Original Message -----
From: "rene.dalmeijer" <rene.dalmeijer at hetnet...>
To: <strawbale at amper....muni.cz>
Sent: Monday, April 12, 2004 2:37 PM
Subject: Re: [Strawbale]Ideas


> Alex,
>
> My first question why are you building in SB? If the house is going to be
> so big anyway whats the point? I am sure it would have some nice spaces in
> it but I am unsure of what your design brief is for the house. Big and
> complex does not equate to sustainable. I also have the impression the
> building would require a serious structure with the curved floating roof
> structure making it relatively unsuitable for SB. Because the structure
> will create severely concentrated point loads making it quite unsuitable
> for SB construction.
>
> The spreading loads of the huge shallow arch can not be taken up by the SB
> end walls. The arch would need some form of ties to prevent the spreading
> loads transferring into the end walls.
>
> I also have many other considerations I think you should think about or
> reconsider like the amount of glass which is far to great for thermal
comfort.
>
> At 07:36 AM 4/12/04, you wrote:
> >On a different note, I'm now tinkering with DesignWorshopLite and have
come
> >up with this idea
>
>http://f1.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/aleric31/album?.dir=/4487&.src=ph&store=&p
r
> >odid=&.done=http%3a//photos.yahoo.com/bc/aleric31 for my dream house.
It'll
> >be post and beam with strawbale in fill, oh and a lot of glass too. I did
> >wonder about semi self supporting à la Amazon Nails, but I figured with
that
> >much unsupported roof span the outward stresses on the walls would be too
> >much. Anyone got an ideas?
>
>
> Rene Dalmeijer
>
>
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