(April 2010)

The straw hut is an idea that has been on my mind for several years. The idea was to build a house with bamboo and straw. A light dwelling that two people could build easily, within a month. The three fundamental pillars of the project were ecology, economy, and autonomy.

The dwelling should be affordable enough to allow two minimum wages to pay the investment back in ten years.  

The house must also have autonomy in its systems of air conditioning, energy, sewage, and water supply except for the drinking and cooking water.

The project wasn´t free of challenges to just keep those three pillars barely standing, as I had to compromise on many things.

The first thing was the bamboo. The option of bringing it from Colombia or Ecuador meant consuming the entire budget for the project. Buying it in Spain was even more expensive. So I had to opt for timber as a structural material.

In this project, ecology means a construction free of emissions of organic compounds or asbestos, as well as the use of materials, machinery, and labour that implies a small ecological footprint, including elements of transport. Also refers to its subsequent recycling or recovery and its reincorporation to the natural cycle. Again the limited budget did not allow me to be consistent with wanting to keep the building free from VOC and I ended up using OSB board as a cheap alternative to timber.

Whenever possible, the pre-acclimatization would be by Canadian well, because it is a "cheap" system with little impact. This Canadian well should be a ceramic clay pipe, not the usual PVC or polyethene pipe.

The electrical needs shouldn't exceed 4 to 5 kW h / day.