Southern Comfort in a Straw Bale Home
(Page 3 of 7)
June/July 2004
By Claire Anderson
For 10 years, he lived at The Farm, a famed intentional community on the outskirts of Summertown, Tenn. Today, he continues to teach courses in natural building there. (Visit www.thefarm.org for more information.)
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"I always feel that I'm not designing buildings," he says. "I'm helping people design their building. I use my expertise to do sensible planning and safety, taking the design cues from my clients to make their sketches work." His specialty is passive-solar home design, and he and his wife, Katey Culver, have been involved with straw bale building since 1994. And like Elise, he was inspired by Joanne De Havillan.
'I called to talk with Joanne about an article I'd read, and by the time we'd finished the conversation, she had hired me to help with a workshop in North Carolina," he says.
As an architect, Switzer immediately recognized the merits of using straw bales as a building material. Since his start with straw bale construction, he and Culver have consulted on and designed two to three straw bale homes each year. Elise and Michael met him at a weekend straw bale workshop at The Farm, and in 1996, hired him to design their home.
'Elise sent me photos of houses in the area she liked," Switzer says, "and we worked up a design that incorporated those traditional elements, like high ceilings and tall doors. The plan was an organic process that came out of Elise and Michael's needs.'
Setting The Precedent
After the plans were drawn, changed and drawn again, Elise presented them to the Oconee County, Ga., authorities to obtain a building permit. She also gave them copies of approved straw bale construction codes from other states, as well as the names and phone numbers of code officials who had worked with straw bale construction. In addition, she provided videos of fire tests done on straw bale walls and a page from The Last Straw that addressed common concerns about straw bale construction.
'I wanted to share my knowledge with them, because that's what The Last Straw taught me to do: Be prepared to educate, rather than alienate, building code officials," Elise says.
William White, former Oconee County code enforcement director, approved the couple's building permit — it was the first for a straw bale house in that county. "Under the Southern Building Code, which we followed at the time Elise and Michael's house was being built, there's nothing that said you couldn't build [a nonload-bearing straw bale home]," White says. "The design of the house was structurally sound, and everything other than the straw complied with the codes. And there was nothing that expressly forbade using straw in your walls, either.'
Moving From Inspiration to Perspiration
The couple decided to be their own contractor, but Michael was visiting friends in Europe when Elise broke ground in August 1999. "I came home to a huge muddy hole in the ground," Michael says.
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