In our difficult time, when building your own house becomes an unbearable task for many people, Alexander Gapanenok from the city of Dokshitsy, Vitebsk region, Belarus, decided to build his home from straw. How promotes the process of building a house from an alternative building material, read further.
- Who just did not scare us mice, damp and fire. Who just did not get confused, recalling a fairy tale about three piglets. All this nonsense. We laugh and turn your finger at the temple, who are not familiar with the technology of straw construction, says Alexander. - With my example, I want to dispel myths and prove that it is cheap, reliably and durable.
Alexander 36 years old. He comes from Dokshitz, studied in Minsk Ptopa to the builder, then in Industrial-Pedagogical College and at the Engineering and Pedagogical Faculty of BNTU. The ideas of straw construction was carried away at the university.
- I immediately impressed me that houses folded from straw bales, warmer brick, block and wooden. So, at times below the cost of heating. He began to study literature, articles on the Internet, walked to seminars to Evgeny Shirokov - this is a well-known popularizer of straw housekeeping. It sought to "feel the technology". Then, year in 2003, when he studied in Minsk, a straw house was built in kolodisch. I asked for a brigade, I was ready to work for free, just to gain experience, but I did not take me: they were not interested. So for the first time to deal with straw in practice I had already in my plot, ten years later.
After the wedding and the birth of the child, the housing issue began to demand a speedy decision: not to join the same life in the "Oder". Taking a bank loan and adding its very modest savings, the family began to build a house.
- Were there any doubts? No. I am a joiner - put the frame is not a problem. As for dampness and moisture did not worry at all. Since childhood I know that the correctly assembled haystone can stand in the field the whole season without any film, while remaining inside absolutely dry. The main thing in the Solomenan construction is to clearly follow the technology. The only thing that was embarrassed was the neighbors looked like a white crow.
Alexander bought from Farmer, the Gader's press element, gathered a rye hay with the fields (the collective farm sells it good for funny money) and prepared approximately half a thousand bales. All wooden elements of the frame of the future house saw on its own siloram.
Main construction work Alexander and Father were performed in the summer-invent of 2013. In July, a wooden carrier frame was collected on the ready foundation. In August, the frame covered the roof, and only then began to fill the walls with straw blocks. The bales were placed under the roof so that the straw was not mock in the rain.
- Until the walls did not begin to lay the walls, many thought that I was joking about the straw. I remember the veterinarian in the evening. He stopped the car in the middle of the road, runs to us: "Peasics, what are you, stolen?" During the construction time, we have listened to many tips from people far from construction. I think everyone should do his own business. I do not go to treat piglets and do not take something to advise the doctor.
Alexander demonstrates us its building material - a standard straw bale with a width of 50 cm and a length of 80-85 cm. Weight - approximately 16 kg.
The blocks were connected by special wooden pins, and the joints between the blocks were densely the free straw. Then cut the walls with electric copies for alignment, the angles were laid out in a small metal mesh, after which the first layer of the solution of clay plaster was applied outside. Technology requires to apply three layers of plaster (1 cm each) outside and from the inside of the house.
- At this stage, we were also deposited by questions and advice. Like, how can I plaster on straw? Fall off the same. And here is not. The gum in the hair fell? Easy to get it from there? So here: thousands of sticking straw stalks reliably hold the plaster.
The plaster on a cement basis is not suitable here: it misses moisture and condensate will be formed at the junction - decay will begin in this place. The clay plaster has the ability to pull out all the extra moisture from the walls. The only drawback is a solution for a long time, up to two weeks.
Architectural feature of the straw house - long skes of roofing cornices. They protect the walls from excessive moisture during oblique rainfall.
- Our facade is not finished yet. Outside the house was covered with just one layer of clay plaster and stood so two years. Do you think, somewhere started rotting? Nothing like this, - says Alexander and pulls the yellow stem from the wall.
Our conversation continues inside the house, where finishing works are going. The walls in the rooms are already covered with two-three layers of clay plaster.
- I wonder how to hang batteries or a TV on the wall? - We are interested in. - You will not drill holes in straw ...
- For this, at the frame stage, mortgage wooden racks and bars are envisaged, which will later be attached to the battery or drove the screws for hanging various lockers. In the bathroom, plasterboard sheets will be screwed to mortgage racks for further tile cladding. By the way, the self-tapping screw can be driven into the plaster - a photo frame, a picture and even a small shelf for books it will endure, because its thickness is 3 cm.
- straw is well lit. In which case does such a house in a torch turn?
In response, Alexander is chirks a lighter and brings the fire tongue to the plastered wall, holds seconds 20.
- Why burn here? What is needed for burning? Oxygen. In the compressed blocks it is practically no. Checked: with long-term exposure of the fire, only the walls of the block are charred. And one more important point is usually a fire, people die from poisonous smoke. There is no chemistry here, only natural materials. Make conclusions.
Faise the fire follows at the construction stage, when the straw is scattered throughout the site. It happened, the neighbors came to us and littered. I told them: "Peasics, no offense, get out of 20 meters."
Now the house is heated with the help of the stove, after checking, another solid fuel boiler will be used. On the Internet you can read that the straw house is 4 times the warmer of wooden and 7 times the warmer of the brick. So this or not?
"Take up - then check," says Alexander. - Last winter, when the Father worked inside, they shot the stove only in the morning, and the temperature did not fall below 15 degrees. According to my calculations, the winter should be enough for the winter.
Another trump card of straw buildings is ecology. There will not argue: all the materials are natural.
- In the pursuit of cheaply today build houses from any chemistry, where without forced ventilation you can just suffocate. It happens, under the brand of extomas they sell a gas-silicate box, covered with reed slabs, "says Alexander. - In the straw house, the ventilation goes through the walls, he "breathes", not highlighting any harmful substances. Plaster regulates moisture, supporting it in the area of 55-60%, and filters air.
This summer, when it was above 30 degrees on the street, we hit our studio apartment in a brick house. And here at this time there were 19 degrees, with open windows the temperature rose to 23.
The straw homes are raised quickly enough: the brigade can manage in one season. Alexandra has dragged into the process that he explains some family circumstances. The house will look much more beautiful after the finish line.
- How long will the straw house last?
- More than a hundred years. We do not live so much. The oldest straw houses have survived in America, where pressors were invented. In Belarus, the first houses from the straw blocks were built in 1996 in the village of Mikhedovichi Petrikovsky district. In one of them, people still live, and in all these years they did not have any complaints on the straw. The second home is empty: he simply was not lucky with tenants.
It is time to affect the most interesting question - the cost of construction.
- Once I learned that in our area someone built a bath for $ 36 thousand. Imagine: Bath! I then said that I would build a house for that kind of money, but I shouted that it was impossible. In fact, it turned out even cheaper - just over $ 30 thousand per 106 square meters with interior decoration, to which we only proceed. It turns out, somewhere $ 300 per square meter.
And one could have been cheaper: my inexperience was affected. It was enough for a light pile-scolded foundation, and I poured 30 cubic meters of concrete. If it took cheaper windows and the boiler easier, then the "square" would cost dollars in 200. But it is better not to save on such things.
Taking into account all your mistakes and taking experience, soon Alexander is going to start building a straw house for his brother. According to him, the foundation, the walls and the roof will cost somewhere in $ 10 thousand. The walls there will be laying out of the straw tiles with a height of 2.8 m.
- We spied this technology at Lithuanians, adding our own, - Alexander shows us the prototype of the slab in their garage. - Blocks will be interconnected by self-draws. So build in Lithuania, Ukraine - why can't we?
If there are such cheap houses from straw, then why technology is still not developed to industrial scales? According to one of the pioneers of the straw housekeeping in Belarus, Eugene Wisdom, a construction complex in this direction is simply not interested. "The profit of the developer in the conditions of our economic system is approximately 30% of the value of the materials. When building materials are a tree and straw, it is clear that you can't do special money, "the scientist noted in an interview.
Alexander Gapanenok believes that the pre-transparent straw houses have a great future. Their distribution is still preventing the lack of information and distrust of construction material. His like-minded enthusiast from Dokshitz will try to find at the exhibition "Belorussian House - 2015", which will be held in November in the Minsk Palace of Sports.
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