Join us to tour 2 straw bale houses in the process of being built at Terra Corazon Farm in Valley Center as part of the SD-GBC's Annual Green Homes Tour.
Tag: strawbale
Testimony about one of our strawbale homes in the snow
Attached are some photos taken this AM of the house - 3-4" of snow which is pretty good for Campo. Low 20's outside at night. Interior drops to 72 when the woodstove is cold or overnight, and the whole house heats quite uniformly. We haven't used the mini-split heater. I know I harp on this, but such performance is remarkable. This house is just so damn easy to live in
Strawbale Building Hands-on Workshop 2/9/19
There are still a few spots left for the Strawbale Building Workshop we will be teaching at Terra Corazon Farm in Valley Center on Sat., Feb 9, 2019, as part of the San Diego Sustainable Living Institute’s new Natural Building Program. This will be a fun day spent in a relaxed and safe environment learning …
Want to visit a strawbale house, touch clay plaster, or sit on a cob bench? Green Homes Tour 10/21/18
Interested in seeing some of our work in person? Here’s your chance: three projects we worked on will be open to the public on the Green Homes Tour on Sunday, Oct 21, 2018, from 10 am – 4 pm. The Tour is an annual event hosted by the San Diego chapter of the Green Building …
Saving the world with carbon-smart materials like straw
It sounds far-fetched at first, but building with straw and other bio-based, carbon-sequestering materials can help fight climate change. We can go beyond “doing less harm” with building, we can actually do some good. Check out this chart from Architecture 2030’s Carbon-Smart Materials Palette showing that straw bales not only cause less carbon dioxide to …
Fallgren Strawbale Home will be featured on SDGBC’s Green Homes Tour Oct 2018
The Fallgren strawbale home, recently certified a Net Zero Energy Building through the Living Building Challenge, will be featured on this year’s Green Homes Tour! The tour is Sunday, October 21, 2018 from 10 am – 4 pm at locations all over the county. More info and registration can be found here. *** Update: There are …
video from the Excellence in Energy Leadership award 2018
We were honored to receive an Excellence in Energy Leadership award from SDG&E in recognition of our recent Net Zero strawbale project, the Fallgren Home. As part of the award, they made this short video that promotes the project (as well as SDG&E). There is plenty wrong with our current energy system and it’s easy …
Can construction really be “regenerative”?
At its most basic, construction requires taking a lot of stuff from somewhere and using it to build. It is an inherently destructive and consumptive process: no stuff = no building. Because of this, it is has been hard to imagine truly regenerative construction: building in a way that not only does less harm to our …
Fallgren Strawbale Home receives Net Zero Energy certification through Living Building Challenge
On Jan 3, 2018, the Fallgren Home in Campo, CA, became the second building in Southern California to be awarded “Net Zero Energy Building” status through the Living Building Challenge. This third-party certification is based on actual performance data and verifies that the building uses less energy than it produces annually, as well as meets …
Wakeham Strawbale Home on the USGBC Green Homes Tour Oct 22
For the 5th year in a row, one of our projects has been selected for the San Diego Green Building Council’s Green Homes Tour! Join us in Solana Beach to tour the Wakeham Strawbale Home. Many of you visited this home during the construction at our Open House-in-Process event, now come and see it finished! …