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[Strawbale]Re: Strawbale]straw woof insulation??



Dear Dee,

On Jun 2, 2005, at 07:36, strawbale-request@amper....muni.cz wrote:

Dear Duncan
thanx for your reply  and questions. this is our situation:

* if you take the tiles off, put straw beneath and the tiles back on, the
space is skyhigh so thats no limitation
Putting in loose straw is a serious fire risk. You need to use bales if you do. As it is a refit the trusses (roof frames) are most probably not at a suitable bale distance apart. This means cutting bales to fit (no looses stiffing of straw.) The bales can be quite a serious load. personally I would prefer using a blown in insulation Like cellulose or Rice husks if they are available.

* about moisture, the attick is dry. Of course when putting the tiles back on, one has to be very carefull to do a good job and perhaps one may want a
2nd backup layer. my first thought is a plastic foil but that of course
doesnt breath. Perhaps a milk treatment on top of the top plaster?
With bales you need some form of drip barrier above the bales This should prevent water dripping into the bales. Preferably the drip barrier should have an air cavity between it and the bales. A good, also fire proof, drip barrier is a closed layer (with very few bits of straw poking through) of earth plaster. Below the bales you need a really good moisture barrier sheets of osb is not good enough you also need to close all seems. A continuos lapped seems foil is very important there should be absolutely no interior air leakage into the bales.
* With what i told about the sandwich idea i think the roof only gets
stronger when aplying the strawbales. IFFFF the interconnection between the upper and lower layer are strong and stiff. the old roof has survived many winters with a meter of snow or more on the roof so to start with, it seems
pretty rigid.
I can not fully comment on the structural merits of this construction but I suppose you are thinking of creating a box with OSB sheeting above and below the bales? This will make the outer roof surface stiffer but not substantially increase the strength of the roof trusses. This can only happen if the sheeting is joined along the edges (nailing) and the sheeting is placed on the upper and lower (the bottom horizontal or lowest member) surfaces of the truss ie not sandwiching the bales.

about your alternatives like the popcorn (new to me, gr8 idea!) what do you
do to keep rodents away?
by the way at the moment the roof has no box structure between which we can
blow in stuff. we have to do carpentry anyhow it seems.....

many thanx for all your thougths

Rene