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load bearing strawbale with a flat roof at winter?

 
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hello everyone,
I want to build a small 50-ish sq.m. load-bearing straw bale home. To make it completely off-grid, I think of having the roof almost flat, with a minimal slope to collect the water from the roof.
The bales I can find have a density of 125kg/cubic meter.
The normative snow load in my region is 1600 Pa (160 kg/sq.m)

Will the bales even withstand the load?
 
steward
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Would the straw bales be the only thing that would handle the load?  No posts to hold up the roof and support the weight?

If I were building a straw bale home I would start off construction like a traditional home, having the framing support the roof.  Then I would put the straw bales between the framing.

Please tell us a little more about how you plan to construct this home.
 
Rocket Scientist
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In the absence of detailed information, a ballpark estimate would be like:
50 m2 gives around 30 m of perimeter x say 0.5 m thick = 15 m2 of wall.
50 m2 x 160 kg/m2 = 8000 kg live snow load / 15 m2 = 533 kg/m2 (around 100 psf). Roughly equivalent to having people standing on top of the wall crowded as closely as possible.

With the dead load of walls and roof already compressing the bales, there might not be much further movement from seasonal snow load. I expect the bales could structurally hold this fine, but there might be enough movement to crack plaster... an experienced strawbale builder would need to weigh in on that.

There is no particular reason to have a flattish roof to collect rainwater. Gutters can do that regardless of the slope.
 
Yaroslav Gordiyenko
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Glenn Herbert wrote:
There is no particular reason to have a flattish roof to collect rainwater. Gutters can do that regardless of the slope.



but what about snow? i was thinking a flatter roof would collect more snow which would melt and provide water
 
Glenn Herbert
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Any lower slope roof will collect snow, and if you make it strong enough to hold the load, should be fine. Most of mine is 1.5:12 pitch and drains positively while snow does not slide off.
 
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