[Strawbale] Green roofs on strawbale buildings

[zac solomons]

Thanks for your replies Carol and Nigel and also Rikki.

I ordered that ebook Carol and it looks good so thanks for that. Was sorry
to hear about your experiences in Teruel Nigel, and to be honest this did
scare me a bit since it sounds like my worst nightmare. Still what Rikki
said was somewhat reassuring. It sounds like it would be good to
pre-compress the bale walls with strapping over the wall plate before
putting a green roof on. Do you guys think this would solve the problem?-
bales would be compressed and level prior to any extra load being added. Or
maybe i should stick to lighter roofs until i have more experience? The
building i am considering will only be 4metres by 3metres.

On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 5:03 PM, nigel thornton
<nigel.thornton2 at gmail...>wrote:

> Hi Zac
>
> My own experience of placing a green roof on top of straw bale construction
> is that it can cause huge problems. We have  a building which was put
> together in Teruel Spain and consists of two rectangular units broken up
> into various smaller rooms but both about 100 metres square each. This was
> originally designed as a load bearing construction with no wooden supporting
> structure. The weight distribution caused the main problem and this was
> accentuated by the difficulty of achieving perfect leveling of the straw
> bales in the first instance. The placing of the roof (very large pre
> fabricated 3 ply panels) and the subsequent impact of the weight led to the
> walls bulging and moving. This in itself led to water ingress as the panels
> had moved slightly causing further problems. We only managed to resolve this
> by adding a wooden frame throughout the structure to level and support the
> roof.  Our roof is flat although obviously we have an incline built onto it,
> it our case we used small clay balls (arlita) but maybe more of an incline
> would have helped.  Essentially I would not recommend the green roof on a
> large building unless you are only using straw bale as an infill.
>
> Best wishes
>
> Nigel
>
>
>
>
> On 13 September 2010 16:30, zac solomons <zac.solomons at gmail...> wrote:
>
>> Hello all
>>
>> I am considering putting a green roof on my next straw bale building. I
>> have heard of several people doing this, but am struggling to find good info
>> about how to do it. I have built two smallish loadbearing sb buildings so
>> far, both with lightweight roofs. My next project is an outdoor kitchen for
>> a school and i am a bit nervous about putting a big heavy roof on it. Due to
>> budget constraints i would prefer not to involve an architect. It will be a
>> simple one storey box but i am worried about calculating loads. If there is
>> no point loading, can strawbale walls simply be relied upon to hold up an
>> extensive green roof? Is there any structural info for strawbale walls
>> available?
>>
>> I'm also looking for a good guide to installing a green roof: how to build
>> an effective drainage system, best plants and substrates etc
>>
>> Hope someone can help
>>
>> All the best
>>
>> Zac
>>
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>>
>
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