Hay Houses and Straw Buildings: Happiness is a Hay House
(Page 4 of 7)
July/August 1979
By the Mother Earth News editors
Our "final touches" consisted of stuffing as much hay as we could under the eaves and into the space that was left between the roof poles. We also laid our plastic vapor barrier on the ground, and then our rugs . . . and some used linoleum that designated the kitchen area. Last of all, we placed bricks in a bed of sand in the center section . . . to make a heatproof base for our new Defiant stove (and-although we've never had to use it -installed a fire extinguisher in a handy spot nearby)
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It was 10 degrees below zero outside when we lit the first fire in our temporary home. Winter had arrived, but we were grateful that the cold weather had waited for us to finish-or almost finish-our house. During that first night, though, we realized that our home was simply not warm enough yet and that we would have to cover the walls with a good of plastic windbreak. Granted, such material isn't aesthetically pleasing, and it's a high-tech, petroleum-based product . . . but it seemed to be the only practical solution at that moment. The plastic was stretched over the inside walls and all the way around the outside of the structure. And, ah . . . what a difference the extra windproofing made!
However, we were still losing a lot of heat up through the roof ... we could tell-by the rate of snow-melt-that our six inches of hay simply didn't provide a sufficient barrier! So we had to solve the problem of how to hang fiberglass batts without damaging them (after all, you should be able to recycle the materials used in a temporary house!) when there were no conventional rafters to support the insulation.
Finally, we decided to string lengths of previously acquired army field telephone wire from the center crossties out to the circumference of the house . . . which created a loose webbing to support the fiberglass. Then with great difficulty-the batts were pushed up through the network, flattened out, and all the spaces between them closed up. Once the fiberglass was in place, we pulled the wires taut-drawing the batts up against the ceiling and retied each "cable". With additional insulation stapled against the central roof section, our house-which had taken a month to build and two more weeks to winterize-was as cozy as anyone could wish.
Our last cold-weather job was to build doghouse...which we accomplished in about an hour, using hay bales and old lumber. Once that was done, we knew the whole "family" would be warm.
An Extended Stay
When spring finally arrived, our minds turned to a garden . . . so, we constructed a sun-heated greenhouse against the hay home's south walls, with old railroad ties for a base and a recycled-lumber framework to support more salvaged storm windows. This hothouse allowed us to start plants early, as well as grow tomatoes and cucumbers well into the following October . . . which is quite late for northeastern Minnesota.
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