Most of the population is very cautious about the use of chemicals in food and drink – preservatives, emulsifiers, colorings, antioxidants, other food additives, although they buy food without, as a rule, reading the composition on the packaging. People are very actively protesting against the use of chemicals in agriculture – herbicides, pesticides, defoliants, insecticides and even fertilizers.

Everyone is in favor of “ecologically clean” products, they talk about it non-stop, but almost no one really knows what it is and how to distinguish it from “dirty”.

People have already gotten used to the mass introduction of artificial, i.e. chemically obtained, substances into the category of things and do not protest, relying, apparently, on the fact that they will be able to make the right choice themselves. Therefore, a significantly smaller number of the population controls the quality of their “second skin” – clothes, shoes, accessories and other wearable items, meticulously finding out the proportion of synthetics in them and trying to choose items with a predominance of natural components.
It may seem incredible, but the same people who strive to keep “synthetics” out of their everyday life do not think about the fact that their home is largely the same “synthetics”, i.e. a product of the chemical revolution.

If, when buying a suit or shoes, we try to choose those items that have less “synthetics” at all, without going into the differences between the types of synthetic substances, then, when building or renovating our home, we most often do not even ask ourselves about the composition and origin of certain elements of the house.
Having chosen a suit based on the criterion of naturalness of the fabric, we usually do not think about the naturalness of the lining, not to mention the material of the threads, buttons and other accessories. In the case of housing, such a lightweight approach is unacceptable at least because the arrays and surfaces of the elements, and therefore the flow of impacts, are many times greater.

Those who ask such questions usually reassure themselves that everything will be fine if the main material of the house is brick or wood, which do not arouse suspicion due to their centuries-old testing. But they forget that 60-70 years ago, a log thinner than 40 cm in diameter was not used in housing construction due to large heat losses (and now it is difficult to find such a log) and that in such a complex system as a house, there are other materials, the effect of which cannot be compensated for by walls made of brick or wood. Unfortunately
, designers and builders care even less about the environmental friendliness of the materials that make up the buildings. The reason is clear – not for themselves. Even today, when it is possible to choose and buy materials with different levels of environmental friendliness, we have repeatedly seen a picture of the construction of an “elite” house in an “elite” area, during which the walls are faced with brick on the outside, and thermal insulation made of phenolic-resole foam plastic or another equally harmful polymer is laid on the inside.

Natural alternative

Have you ever seen a bird’s nest, the creation of a swallow or a wasp? These are dwellings that are perfectly adapted to the environment, weather conditions, life rhythm and natural cycle, and are in close contact with Nature and the Cosmos. Can some of the techniques used to build bird and wasp dwellings be used in human dwellings?

Building a house from straw bales may seem like a crazy idea at first glance. But it is well known that straw bales combine all the properties of an excellent building material: they are cheap, durable, readily available, environmentally friendly and have good thermal insulation. Straw bales are durable as long as they are protected from penetrating and increasing humidity. Their insulating properties are much better than those of wooden or brick walls. A straw block with a typical thickness of 50 cm shows excellent thermal insulation properties, which improve after applying plaster. Moreover, the wall remains “breathing” an order of magnitude higher than a wall made of natural logs. Thick walls with their special structural surface have a special charm.

Living and breathing structures create an unusual climate in the room, radiate confidence and security. Strict rectangular surfaces and smooth walls from straw blocks can also be created, but this will require more skill and effort. They are not typical for this natural material. Houses made of straw cubes, on the contrary, will please the eye, delight with soft lines. Round shapes are also possible if you “bend” a layer of blocks. Niches or round arched windows and doors are made with an ordinary electric saw, simply by cutting the desired shape in the straw. Although if the owner is drawn to flat surfaces and right angles – there are no problems either …

Warm nest made of straw

The eco-house project is based on the principle of compliance with the theory of sustainable development – ​​development, in which meeting the needs of the current generation does not jeopardize the ability to meet the needs of future generations. The ecological imperative is included in the concept of the project as a dominant component.

In addition to the general requirements of the assignment, the project is based on the following provisions:
– planning and volumetric solutions must take into account the features of the landscape and construction technologies and ensure the maximum ecological quality of the living environment – ​​internal and external – at minimum costs;
– the house and the site constitute a single artificial ecosystem that does not harm the environment and the health of the current and future generations;
– the total energy consumption (especially fossil fuel energy) both during construction and during operation of buildings must be minimal;
– maximum use of local environmentally friendly materials, careful attitude to the local flora and fauna;
– socialization of the living environment.

The territory planning was carried out taking into account the use of principles of passive “solar” architecture and was aimed at socialization of the territory, development of a human-friendly environment, which should become a “small homeland” for the current and future generations of eco-house residents.
This dictated the planning decisions for the development of the territory and the “solar” architecture of the buildings: a small swimming pool and a bathhouse (at the request of the residents), a fireplace can be provided in the straw house. The eco-house can be equipped with local low-cost permaculture systems for the disposal of domestic wastewater, improving the fertility of garden plots and tested in the climatic conditions of Belarus. The

straw eco-house is usually made energy passive: the enclosing structures have a heat-transfer resistance coefficient of at least 8 (modern SNiPs require 2.5), only local environmentally friendly natural materials are used (straw blocks straight from the balers), which has a good effect on the cost indicators. When building an eco-house, no earthmoving or lifting equipment is used, since the walls are light and do not require a large amount of reinforced concrete in the foundation, which will preserve the grass cover and not damage the earth, which our ancestors considered (and not without reason) “alive”. The eco-house is built using an eco-technology that has already proven itself in Belarus for the construction of enclosing structures (a wall made of straw blocks plastered or covered with plasterboard) in a frame version (the load is borne by a wooden half-timbered frame).

This technology provides the following parameters:

Energy indicators
– Reduction of energy costs during construction compared to brick/gas silicate enclosing structures with modern insulation per 1 m2 of total area by at least 300 times.
Thermal conductivity coefficients of enclosing structures
: floor without heating – 0.23 W/m2K,
straw wall – 0.12 W/m2K,
roof – 0.19 W/m2K.
Energy consumption for heating – less than 40 kW h/m2 per year.
High fire safety (after plastering) is confirmed by official tests. The plastered straw wall structure was officially tested in the USA and assigned to the maximum fire resistance class F119 (a metal truss, for example, belongs to class F15, i.e. it loses its load-bearing capacity 15 minutes after exposure to open fire).
Construction time: from the start of excavation work (foundation) to the moment of occupancy, about 14 weeks pass, if the construction is carried out rhythmically.
The cost of construction is about 260 USD/m2 of total area with finishing “under the wallpaper” in the basic version.

Implementation experience

In Belarus, the first rural eco-houses made of straw blocks were built in 1996. In 1999, after official testing, the Ministry of Architecture and Construction of the Republic of Belarus recommended the projects of these eco-houses for reuse. Their construction continues in increasing volumes, and, having begun as the construction of “housing for the poor,” has turned into housing “for the middle class and the smart rich.” It is this part of the population that is today concerned about the environmental quality of their homes (problems of the impact of polystyrene, PVC, phenol formaldehyde, etc. on health) and heating costs: by 2007, Russia will switch to EU prices for energy due to its accession to the WTO. And this means that the price of gas will increase many times over. Heating 1 m2 of straw eco-houses requires 3 times less energy, which has been proven in practice…
All the necessary regulatory and technical documentation is available. For the first time in the history of the CIS, the developers were awarded the International Prize for Energy Efficiency and Sustainable Energy in the Housing category (Austria, 2000), nominated for the UN Habitat Prize and a number of other prestigious international prizes. A number of foreign specialists, including German, Latvian, Lithuanian, Russian, and Ukrainian, applied and underwent training in this eco-technology in Belarus in 2003-2004. Note: it was not we who came to them, but they who came to us.

Finally, the last thing: it is known from the Bible that the wise Solomon gave several cities for the craftsmen who “knew how to cut down a tree.” Why? Esotericists know that if you interrupt someone else’s life (for example, a tree) to create objects that satisfy your needs, then these objects have a certain energetic quality, and you bear karmic responsibility. The skill of cutting wood in ancient times consisted in reducing and removing this karmic responsibility and improving the energy of the tree, which affected the energy of the built home. Feng Shui masters know this well. Now this knowledge is almost lost. At best, you will be told that the forest should be prepared in winter and at a certain phase of the moon… Straw is another matter: the plant has gone through a full development cycle, the energy of the stem is powerful and positive, special skills are not required for harvesting, and the energy of the home is magnificent. This is emphasized by everyone who lives in eco-houses made of straw.

For example, residents of the eco-village “Druzhnaya” call straw houses “alive” and note that they “sleep well”. This is probably why the foundation sites of ancient religious and defensive structures, such as the pyramids of Giza or the Great Wall of China, were covered with a thin layer of straw. Belarusians also used the energy of straw in the past: when creating straw “spiders” that were attached over children’s cradles and protected children from “evil spirits”, straw roofs, mattresses, utensils, etc. So why not use this accessible, cheap, energy-efficient, environmentally friendly material today, in a difficult economic situation, and get a much higher quality of individual housing for much less money?