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GBlist: Re: Strawbale Moisture Failures -Reply



Bion Howard Wrote:
"Before we publicly mention a bunch of ways they COULD fail leading to
potential misquoting and misuse of undocumented opinion, let's get the
facts.  I will be happy to compile such case histories that may come to
light, but this is important enough to consider restraint on the list until and
unless there is evidence of systematic problems. 'Till then I believe I have
seen enough of strawbale GOOD perf- ormance to be farily comfortable
building them."

Bion--I agree with you in principle, but with two caveats: 1) I'm not
aware of straw bale houses in my part of the country--North
Carolina--that have demonstrated "good performance" in terms of
durability over time; 2)My main beef is that people have been promoting
the technology for low-income housing, and in the absence of long-term
performance data I think it is totally irresponsible  to foist unproven
building systems on the people who can least afford serious
maintenance problems. And I still haven't seen convincing data on
first-cost savings once trim and finish details are accounted for (again,
for our climate). 

I'm all for people who can afford it to experiment and for all of us to learn
from their efforts.

Arnie Katz
AEC
909 Capability Dr.
Raleigh, NC 27606

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