Re: [Strawbale] Green roofs on strawbale buildings

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@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@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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