New Strawbale Home, The

The New Strawbale Home compiles floor plans and images from thirty cutting-edge homes across North America, from California to Quebec, New Mexico to New England, showcasing a spectrum of regional styles and personal aesthetic choices. This practical guide discusses varying climate considerations and essential design details for problem-free construction and low maintenance, and also points out the ecologically friendly, energy-saving aspects of straw bale construction. The New Strawbale Home beautifully illustrates how building with straw bales allows for maximum personal creativity-whether the finished product is an urban home, a country hideaway, or anything in between.

The New Strawbale Home includes information on budget considerations, code compliance, siting for energy efficiency, structural systems, and finishing touches. Also included are the valuable insights and experience of architects, contractors, and owner-builders, plus an extensive resource section.

Author and photographer Catherine Wanek organized the building of a straw bale greenhouse in 1992 and has been an advocate for straw bale construction ever since. She produced and directed the Building with Straw video series, and spent nearly five years publishing and editing The Last Straw Journal. Her first book, The Art of Natural Building, was published in 2002. Wanek lives in Kingston, New Mexico.

Living the Life
We had the pleasure of meeting Catherine at her bed and breakfast in Kingston NM where we stayed for a hands on strawbale building workshop. This book as well as Catherine inspired us to build not only our home but our vacation rentals out of strawbale and as much off the grid as possible ([...]) If you are into strawbale building, or just considering it, I highly recommend visiting her bed and breakfast or buying her books so you can see all the latest and greatest of eco-building techniques that are out there!

Nice pictures
This book had some good pictures of different SB structures. But, to me that is all there was.

Nice picture book, not a build it manual
For your money you'll be getting what amounts to a picture book with several different types of strawbale homes across the US and Canada. There is a small starter section, with pictures, on general construction details.
For each house there will be at least two, sometimes four or five, pages of text and pictures about the owners homes and how they were built. Don't buy this book thinking it's a build it manual, that isn't the case as the information is more of an idea book type presentation. You'll get a little on costs, size and other things including square feet both inside and outside the walls (along with small floor plans of each home) and several very well done photographs.
I found these photos to be the best part of the book as they will either give you some ideas for your own home or at least they'll show you what's out there. Some of the ideas had a Santa Fe look but some had a sharp edged box with lots of glass look (and not much straw either). Most of the homes were not displayed from all angles, just from selected views.
If you're on a strict budget you won't want this book unless you can find a cheap used copy, it's much more of an idea book.

price per square foot included in this book
Beautiful book with much needed info..a real treat for the eyes..the best is it gives the cost of contruction for almost all the houses shown...if you want to build a strawbale than this book is one you will want to include in your library..does not give alot of hands on constrution but it does gives you visual ideas of what others have done with their houses..

Beautiful photographs and the down and dirty details
This is the first "coffee table" book that shows how exquisitely beautiful straw bale homes can be. It also gives good information on how much they cost, various energy savings you can recieve from a straw bale home and other information on how the various owners and builders built and paid for their homes.

Most of the homes are in the higher-end spectrum and I was disappointed that I didn't see less expensive (but maybe not as fancy) homes included. However I did like the coverage of the co-housing communities who use straw bale building.

Overall, a lovely book that you will drool over if you like straw bale or any other natural building.