Matthew Nistico

Wild wood sorrel pops up dependably and always makes a nice addition to the green leaf salad.

But probably the most useful volunteer has been turkey tail mushroom.  I had two rows of mushroom logs fail - I set them up, inoculated them with commercial cultivars, and two years later have seen zero sign of the intended mushrooms.  Probably took too long before inoculating them, and did so during an unfavorably dry season.  These were windfall trees, so I didn't have the choice in when this operation was occuring.

Since then, they have sprouted nothing but wild fungus.  I was able to confidently ID the wild fungus as true turkey tail, however, which is medicinally valuable, and have harvested a decent quantity for myself and for resale.

Nancy Reading wrote:If the eaves are open it is not surprising that the temperature varies so much. I suspect that if you blocked gaps and insulated the roof you might find the temperature range was much more suitable for cool food storage - a slightly damp coolish place is ideal for many vegetables and drier shelves for pantry items and seeds perhaps.

Clearly closing the gaps in the eaves and adding insulation to the ceiling would be a good first step.  If I wanted to explore the potential for this structure as something like a root cellar, I'd also consider berming earth higher on all sides.  That would go a long way towards stabilizing the temperature through the seasons.  You have the advantage that the masonry walls should be impervious to soil contact.

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:Most of the time I drink only water. It's from the tap, but boiled first and then cooled down. Not cooled in the fridge, I don't like it that cold. I prefer 'room temperature', or even 'body temperature'. If I don't forget I add a little 'sea' salt (Atlantic ocean, from France).

Do you have unreliably safe tap water in the Netherlands?  I would be very surprised.  Why do you boil it first?  To me that always makes for "dead tasting" water.  If you want to eliminate chlorine, I think that can be achieved with sufficient hours of passive evaporation.

Richard Henry wrote:For Matthew in Clemson, I understand mice may not make nests in straw bales, but what about insects such as fire ants?  Just curious.

It's a good question.  All I can say is that, after many years, I've noticed no problems.

The worst I can report is that I used to leave some clerestory windows open in my unfinished house with the bare-straw interior walls.  Birds would fly in and out and, I eventually realized, make nests in the cracks between bales.  I don't leave the windows open any more.

John Weiland wrote:

Maxeem Konrardy wrote:........... does anyone do open air insulation? That is, just install a standalone metal roof over the house? Or is that going to cause too many wind-tunneling effects (unless built like a beast)?

If it's just being built like a bare-bones picnic shelter, the noise will be quite loud I suspect.  However, if plywood or other wood or sheet insulation were put down on the roofing joists before adding the metal, that might reduce noise issues substantially due to a reduced drum head effect.

For sure, adding plywood under the metal roof would deaden the noise.  But even without doing so, the drum effect on the metal roof is completely outside and without physical connection to the house itself.  I can't help but think it would still be a lot quieter than having rain impact the house roof.  Provided you keep your windows closed.

Maxeem Konrardy wrote:This may be nuts but does anyone do open air insulation? That is, just install a standalone metal roof over the house? Or is that going to cause too many wind-tunneling effects (unless built like a beast)?

The rain wouldn't directly impact the house as much and its own roof of whatever materials would be less exposed to elements. I guess it would require too much planning ahead, working that into an initial slab pour, etc. And I'm not sure it addresses the issue of reducing drumming, but you could design that extra structure however you want.

A fascinating suggestion.  I think that this would be very expensive, almost certainly cost prohibitive, but I don't see why it wouldn't work if one really wanted to undertake the challenge and took a "price be damned!" attitude towards it.

Based on your drawing, I'm assuming the idea is to retrofit around an existing house...?

For sure, it would drastically reduce the noise of rain inside the house.  More importantly, it would completely shelter the house from the elements, as you say.  Without sun exposure, your existing house roof - let's suppose that it has regular asphalt shingles, which are most common - would last a much longer time.  I won't say indefinitely, but a damned long time.  Cooling costs would also be reduced.

Yes, wind-tunneling would be a problem, but hardly insurmountable.  You'd have to build the metal roof uberframe sturdy enough, but people build metal-roofed open frame pavilions and car ports all the time.  It can be done.  Trusses are amazing things.

True, the examples I cite aren't usually as large as a house.  As your span sizes increase, engineering challenges increase even more.  Unless your existing house happened to be very narrow, building the uberframe to completely cover it would definitely take some serious materials and careful design.

I think the concerns about a foundation are the least concerning.  No particular reason that this couldn't be retrofit.  Presuming there is ample open space around the house to work with, you could pour independent concrete foundations for each support column using off-the-shelf cardboard round forms.  That's the easy part.

Again, my comments are all based on the assumption we are retrofitting a second roof above an existing structure.  If you wanted to plan a new structure with such a double roof, you'd take a different approach for sure.  That would probably simplify a lot of the engineering challenges, but also raise a lot of eyebrows at the code official's office ; )

My own strawbale house is located in upstate South Carolina, just a couple hours drive from the Blue Ridge, a temperate rain forest.  On paper, at least, I get 50" per year.  No problems to report, so I suspect the OP's concerns are overblown.  Yes, SB buildings were pioneered in arid and semi-arid climates, but they can perform perfectly well in humid climates as well, given the proper detailing.  I wouldn't try to build a load-bearing SB structure here, where the bale walls go up BEFORE the roof, but that isn't relevant to the OP's question.

I will second several observations already mentioned above.  For sure, lime plaster is the most common finish, as I have used on my home.  Which has stood up very well, BTW.  Exterior clay plasters on SB are a thing, but mostly in drier climates.  There is a reason I didn't attempt an exterior clay-based finish here, even though clay is a lot easier to work with than lime.

Also, while an SB wall is fireproof even without a plaster finish, I wouldn't recommend it.  Resistance to fire arises from the density of the bales.  But that doesn't mean the exposed surfaces won't burn if ignited.  The fire would resolve into a smolder and leave the bulk of the bales intact, because oxygen can't penetrate sufficiently to sustain a flame - there have been documented cases of this happening.  But that would be little comfort if the flames leaping up the surface of the wall set your roof alight before extinguishing themselves.

My SB walls remain unfinished on the interior, and I can report that there is no concern about mice or rats interfering with the exposed bales.  Insects might be a different story.  I've not had problems, but then the exteriors of my bale walls are finished with a very durable lime plaster that went on very well - almost zero cracks over the entire house.

There is no reason why you can't cover a SB wall with siding instead of plaster.  But it would take a lot of work; the framing would need to be considered very carefully.  I'd recommend wooden siding of one type or another.  Metal or vinal could be used, but I'd definitely recommend framing for an air gap between the siding and the bales, as described above, to account for condensation.  And if it were me, I'd still give the bales one good base coat to keep insects out and reduce their vulnerability to fire.  If you do that, you're a third of the way to just finishing the wall with plaster, so why not proceed?

But there remain the concerns voiced above about adding the thickness of a bale-wrap wall to an existing structure that wasn't built to accommodate those dimensions in its foundation or roof overhang.  I don't know the OP's situation, so I can't say just how much trouble that would pose.  For sure, you do NOT want to skimp on the roof overhang on any building, ESPECIALLY on a natural materials building like SB.

I suspect that installing a bale wrap is more trouble than its worth, given the complications.  Though as a natural materials builder it pains me to say it, if I wanted to retrofit an existing structure for extra insulation, that sounds like a good case for a few inches of rigid foam board.

In classic permaculture style, my answer to the OP's question is "it depends."  I have different strategies for different shopping trips.

I am a prepper, so my larder of pantry goods is very large.  This includes dried goods - beans, grains, spices, nuts, pastas, dried fruits, dried mushrooms, etc. - that I mostly keep vacuum packed in mason jars.  It also includes jars and cans of sauces and condiments and soups and such.  I largely keep the larder stocked at my favorite dented-can bargain store, appropriately named simply Bargain Foods.  It's fantastic, a discount store the size of a Walmart where you can hardly exceed $100 spent in a single trip even if you try.

Unfortunately, it is a 45-minute drive away, and I'll often combine it with stops at other, even farther away specialty stores in the same direction, making a whole day of it.  So, I don't go often.  When I do, there is no list, except for hopefully a mental note that "oh yes, my stock of tinned fish is running low," etc.  Mostly, I just buy whatever I discover there, largely comprising canned goods of dubious vintage at half the normal price.  A precise shopping list would be of limited use, since product availability varies considerably.  When occasionally they do have a real gem - bottles of quality olive oil at 1/3 the price, or blocks of imported cheese at 4-for-$5 that would normally cost $10 each - I stock up!  But you can't count on the same items being in stock each visit.

Week to week, on the other hand, my shopping trips to the local grocery stores are different.  Those are when my supply of salad greens is low, or I've pulled some meat from the freezer and a can of sauce from the larder and am planning a specific recipe (usually scaled to produce at least a few days' worth of leftovers).  Then, I have a precise list of usually only a few items, whatever I need to complete the recipe.

But I still manage to apply a bit of the former, opportunistic strategy to my local, limited shopping trips.  That is because my local Walmart seems particularly bad at managing inventory and routinely has perishable items - fresh produce, meats, baked goods - marked down for quick sale.  I always peruse for mark-downs in addition to the few items on my list.  Depending on what really good deals might catch my eye, those items will either refill my freezer (meats) or influence what I cook that week.

Burra Maluca wrote:Sometimes we scrump fruit off the neighbours or from abandoned fruit trees that we walk past.

Scrump!  An excellent, old-fashioned word you rarely run across: to forage fruit, with the strong connotation of leaning over the wall to "forage" from someone else's orchard.  As a young(ish) American, I probably would never know this word, but I learnt it staying in Britain during college when I was introduced to hard cider.  One of my favorite pub ciders was called "Scrumpy Jack."  BTW, even with the exploding craft beer scene here in my corner of the Southern USA, I still struggle to find hard cider as good as what I remember from that summer in Britain.

Carla Burke wrote:We keep a running shopping list for each of several places, that covers our basics. But, we mostly buy whole muscle meats, that John cuts to our preferences if the moment, when we get it home. For example, he will buy a pork belly, then divide it up too cute some for slicing bacon & some for cubes to go into things. But, he also leaves some uncured, too use in some of our favorite Chinese recipes. A whole sirloin will get cut into steaks, a roast, and some starting meat. A whole pork shoulder (or two) gets divided up to make a couple variations of breakfast sausage, Italian sausage, and brats. But how the meat gets divided up is dependent on what we want in the moment.

Oh, I so wish I had the freezer space to buy whole joints of meat like that!

Rio Rose wrote:And, whatever I do, I don't shop hungry!!!

Always sound advice.

Chris Clinton wrote:During the hot season I get into drinking a quick concoction that I just refer to as haymakers, whether or not that's accurate...  I splash a little apple cider vinegar (or any homemade vinegar I might have or alternatively any kind of fruit juice) add a pinch of Himalayan salt and sometimes but not always blackstrap molasses or maple syrup then top the glass with water. It's easy, cheap, tasty and refreshing. Easy to make all kinds of variations.

Yes, what you make is closely related to traditional haymaker's punch AKA switchel.  The classic version uses molasses and is flavored with ginger.

Traditionally, powdered ginger was used, so I read.  I like to use fresh ginger and the following shortcut.  I keep around a bottle of ACV infused with fresh ginger slices and mint sprigs.  Dissolve together with a little molasses and a lot of cold water to make switchel on a hot day.