Transferproject: Professional strawbale building - "Virtual building-site", exhibition and instruction material

Strawbale-workshops are considered as the best way to inseminate this ecological building-technique. The "virtual building site" has some decisive advantages over the common situation: it does not depend on the weather, allows the comparative study of different constructing methods and can, as a permanent installation, be used as an exhibition.

Titel und Synopse

Transferprojekt: Professioneller Strohbau konkret - "Virtuelle Baustelle", Ausstellung und Schulungsunterlagen

Strohballenbau-Workshops gelten als bestes Vermittlungsinstrument für diese ökologische Bauweise. Die "virtuelle Baustelle" weist dabei einige entscheidende Vorteile gegenüber der gängigen Praxis auf: Sie ist witterungsunabhängig, erlaubt die theoretische und praktische Beschäftigung mit unterschiedlichen Strohbautechniken und kann als ständige Einrichtung auch als Ausstellung genützt werden.


Project description / tasks

Status

ongoing

Summary

The asbn - Austrian Strawbale Network, a registered society, has been informing about different techniques of strawbale building (load-bearing, post and frame with infilled strawbales, bales of straw for reconstruction, added strawbale walls as insulation …) for ten years. They did so on their website, through consultings on construction methods, in studies, at strawbale gatherings, at fairs, by giving lectures and last but not least with their book "Neues Bauen mit Stroh" (new building with strawbales), which was published 2008 in the third, completely revised and extended edition.

All these theoretical means for conveying knowledge are necessary, but insufficient without hands-on exercises: workshops on strawbale building have been internationally regarded as the best possible instrument to deliver actual results for decades: Whoever attended such a workshop was very likely going to build a strawbale building him- or herself. For this reason the asbn took the effort to increase the very limited number of workshops held in Europe and to upgrade the quality of the theoretical and hands-on instructions.

The demand is high: an internet research came to a result of six workshops scheduled in Europe in 2009, four of which were already fully booked by January. No workshop was scheduled this year in Austria, regardless of a multitude of requests (asbn, ESBN) proving the great interest. This is because strawbale workshops in the common form (helping at an actual building site) are rare events happening only for a real cause. Furthermore the actual working with strawbales on such sites takes only a very short time, is, due to the dependency of the building process on the weather, often done in a haste and cannot be properly scheduled.

The "virtual building site" has some decisive advantages over the common situation: it does not depend on the weather, allows the comparative study of different constructing methods, wall systems and strawbale techniques in theory and practice and can, as a permanent installation, be used as an exhibition. Combined with written and illustrated instruction materials house builders and building experts are being comprehensively educated according to the state of the art in strawbale building.

The goal of this project was to install a workshop building site and exhibition in Ravelsbach/Lower Austria (home of the asbn), which is independent of the weather and the progress on an actual building site. The virtual building site allows the comparative and extensive study and practice of different strawbale techniques without the pressure of having to finish a project according to a schedule or before the rain starts. An area of about 60 m² (~645 ft.²) indoors and 500 m² (~ 5.380 ft.²) outdoors can be used to demonstrate the most common construction elements with post and frame (ground plate, walls, roof, details, strawbales in reconstructing, prefabricated parts and their assembling on the spot, installation layer, corner-joint, roof intersection, installing of windows and doors) including the actual filling in of strawbales and finishing works like plastering and sheeting. Everything is deconstructable and refillable, resp.

The theoretical parts can be lectured in an adjoining strawbale building (seminar room and office) of 40 m² (430 ft.²), which is also show-and-tell and part of the permanent exhibition. The theory includes: built strawbale houses, overview of the most common construction systems, differences between load-bearing and post and frame, constructive details, base (ground plate made of concrete, ground plate insulated with strawbales or cellulose), building physics, building law, certificates, prefabrication and assembling of prefabricated parts. The theoretical instruction materials will be compiled using the knowledge of all Austrian societies with expertise in the field and presented as powerpoint-presentation (downloadable for participants) as well as in printed form plus Data-CD. 3D-step-by-step-instructions are used for illustrating the processes without language. An important instrument for the decision-finding-process of professionals and private home builders are the ratings of the most common straw bale-building-techniques and -materials regarding building physics, baubiological/-ecological facts and data concerning the climate change (CO2, embodied energy), displayed with advantages and disadvantages.


Project partners

Project management

Herbert Gruber
asbn - austrian strawbale network (Österreichisches Netzwerk für Strohballenbau)

Project or cooperation partner


Contact address

asbn - austrian strawbale network (Österreichisches Netzwerk für Strohballenbau)
Herbert Gruber
Baierdorf 6
3720 Ravelsbac
Tel.: +43 (2958) 83640
E-Mail: asbn@baubiologie.at
Web: www.baubiologie.at


FFG ID: 822230

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