Esopus, I hope someone answers your question because I have thought about building SB if I ever get some land of my own. I'm in Mid-Atlantic, so it's not QUITE the same, but most SB building references I've seen have been from the Western US. I've seen a bit on cob building also, and much of that is in rainy old England, so I imagine that would do well here. (Hope I haven't made a faux pas in calling England "rainy!")

If you decide to do SB, keep us informed! I personally would love to see some kind of floor plan for SB or cob that would make for a good homestead layout. Actually, I'd like to see ANY floor plans that would be considered good for a homestead.

Hope you get some answers soon.

Kay

We have friends that built their own straw bale house and have lived in it for more than 5 years.They live about 2 miles from us here in Central NY. It's beautiful....a post and beam frame and straw bale walls with a stucco finish inside and out. They heat their three level home with one woodstove on the ground floor and the home is very comfortable. One thing they did say was that your roof overhangs have to be bigger than usual to keep the rain and snow from dripping on the walls. They have a homestead, homeschooled their 3 children, and enjoy life to the fullest. Yes it can be done in the Northeast! Good Luck realizing your dream.

There are strawbale homes in Canada. A newer trend is Hemp bale houses. Apparently they stand up better, and deter rodents and insects who do not like the smell.

There is an incredible amount of information available online on strawbale construction. They are being built all around the world. Very good sources of information are available from an amazing number of sites, especially from our Canadian and Australian friends.
First thing is to maybe join and start reading the posts at alt.architecture and the several strawbale related groups hostes by Yahoo and the other available groups the one can easily find using " groups.google.com ".
And don't forget about Cob and my favorite (well currently anyway, always subject to change!) sand/earth bags.... just go here, "here" being the business pages of a wonderfully industrious young lady, Ms. Charmaine Taylor >>>>> www.dirtcheapbuilder.com/ Good luck, have fun, and a great day too! Btw... I would save the Clusty Search Engine page, once you get used to it or the very similar Vivisimo.com, there is no going back to the torture of sifting thru a Google searches barely relevant results, ever.... A9 is ok especially if you want to see pics with your search results

Here is a link that might be useful: clustered Strawbale search results

There is a strawbale house about 2 miles away from me. I'm in the white mountains of NH. Not sure if they live in year round though. Only do tours one day in mid summer and I've never gotten around to peek.
No idea what it even looks like, can see it from the road.

Art (spunbondwarrior),

Thanks so much for the reference to clusty.com in passing! Wow, what a GREAT search engine! Where did you ever find this thing?

And I thought Google couldn't be topped!

I just saw an article in BackWoods home mag. Pretty sure it was that one. The June issue of 05. there was a couple in Maine who built a strawbale house and live in it year round with three kids. It looked really nice. Even had a timber framed sun room or porch on the front! It can be done. They built theirs for 20,000, by themselves. There's a mortgage I could handle. However, they saved up and have no mortgage.

We built Cheryl's studio of strawbale a dozen years ago...pics of it are available at the website mentioned in our profile.

We have 3 ft overhangs and a protective area on the bottom 3 ft of bales...we've had no problems with humidity, etc.
It still looks new.

Does anyone know of any strawbale structures in Indiana? I'm VERY interested in learning more about this!