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At the end of a dirt driveway at the top of a sagebrush-covered hill, a dark green two-story house stands tall.
The home in Pinedale, Wyoming, looks pretty normal at first glance, but to owner Doug Rellstab, it’s not.
“This is a living house,” he said. “When you go through, it just seems alive.”
The retired geologist stood in the entrance-way pointing out the features. On closer inspection, it’s clear that he’s right. The walls are kind of rounded and wavy.
“If you look at all the curves that are built into the window wells and places, it’s got its own feeling to ’em, you know. It’s just not squared off and flat,” he said.
Doug Rellstab stands on his front porch, pointing at the dimpled texture of the recently repaired walls. It’s painted with a mineral-based plaster, and the texture helps disperse raindrops. (Hanna Merzbach / Wyoming Public Radio).
Rellstab and his family built their home in the early 2000s. They wanted something more eco-friendly than your standard house with synthetic insulation.
So they got straw bales from a barley farmer in Idaho and stacked them high like Legos atop a foundation, supporting it with wood posts and beams and sealing it in with a lime-based plaster to prevent decomposition.
“This house is so sealed with plaster you can’t break the plaster off with a claw hammer,” Rellstab said.
The main benefit of straw is it’s a renewable insulation source.
Winters in Wyoming are known for being long and snowy — some of the harshest conditions in the lower 48. Yet, Rellstab said this house has kept him warm, since straw has a similar R-value to fiberglass. Plus, it hardly needed any maintenance for almost 20 years.
“I was so amazed by how well it has held up,” said Lindsey Love, an architect and straw building expert who helped with some recent repairs.
A hallway leading into the kitchen at the Pinedale straw bale home. The walls are painted with non-toxic paints – burnt oranges and mustard yellows that change with the light. (Hanna Merzbach / Wyoming Public Radio)
There were little bits of water damage and some cracks in the plaster. But one benefit of repairing straw: All of the materials can be reused or decomposed.
“There’s no trash. There’s no waste,” Love said.
This style of building was born in the Midwest in the late 1800s as a way to reuse an agricultural byproduct. But by the 1940s, mass-produced cement, spray foam, and fiberglass had taken over.
Now, Love said people in this part of the country are more aware of the environmental costs of those materials and are looking for more sustainable materials. She said building materials such as straw and hemp lock carbon away like trees.
“People come here seeking a connection to nature,” Love said. “I personally feel like it’s in our DNA to want to be surrounded with materials that we have historically and ancestrally been surrounded by.”
Lindsey Love stands on the porch at Doug Rellstab’s house, where she helped with recent repairs. She says she loves to teach others how to build with straw, since it makes her feel confident knowing she can construct a home. (Hanna Merzbach / Wyoming Public Radio)
traw comes in at about the same price as conventional materials, but working with it can be tricky. You have to make sure it’s built correctly to keep moisture away, and not many architects and construction workers know how to do that.
So homeowners often do a lot of the work themselves.
“A lot of times, building with straw and clay and lime — more natural materials — is more approachable,” Love said. “So it’s easier for homeowners to want to take on some of that sweat equity.”
Love is currently launching a training program in eastern Idaho, which is based on one in Moab, Utah. Eight low-income households will learn to build their own townhomes out of straw. Those work hours will go toward buying the home.
Love sees it as a way to tackle the massive housing crisis — and get more people to go into the natural building field, like Will Haywood, who’s currently finishing his own straw bale place in Victor, Idaho.
Married couple, Aska Langman and Will Haywood, stand on the porch of the straw-insulated house they are building. They currently live in a house next door, where Langman runs a dog boarding business. She bought that house for $180,000 back when property was still cheap and says they’ll rent it out for an affordable price when they move into the new place. (Hanna Merzbach / Wyoming Public Radio)
He and his wife chose a more conventional look than the house in Pinedale.
“The only way you can tell now that it’s straw bale is the thickness of the walls here,” Haywood said, pointing to a wood-framed wall that’s about twice as thick as your typical one.
Haywood has worked in construction for over a decade. He got tired of filling dumpsters with plastic on the job site and wanted to do things differently for his own home.
And now that he knows how to build with straw, he hopes to help others do the same. One possibility is starting a company that makes straw building panels.
“Or putting more time and energy into sustainable materials and supporting architects or builders,” Haywood added.
But first, he needs to finish his own straw bale house.
Will Haywood uses a forklift to install straw bale panels into the wooden frame of the house for insulation. The house relies on wood framing more than the Pinedale house, which makes it look more like a normal home. (Aska Langman)
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
