A Walk Through a Straw Bale Passive House

Episode 2
EcoEvo Design, covers an Australian Regional Victorian Straw Bale Passivhaus home. We cover the luxurious and key energy efficiency features of this stunningly built home built by Passive House Services. We cover the building envelope features, and blower door testing the home, in order to help people understand what it means to have a high performing building envelope. Straw Bale is a great way to build a home in Australia.
#ecoevo #buildingperformance

Passive House Services

Efficiency Matrix
Hosted by Joseph Cheung & John Konstantakopoulos

Huff and Puff Constructions

Ventilation = HRV - Zehnder ComfoAir Q450 TR with integrated Daikin FDXS35 Bulkhead split unit:
#strawbalehome #passivehaus #ecoevo

[wayabey]

I learned something new at every point he made.

[Grippy]

Brilliant video, super informative, congratulations John, a genuinely inspiring project !! For an additional 6% or so construction cost, when you consider all the benefits and also the energy savings, adopting passive haus construction really is a no brainer.

[cellomania]

Love your videos guys, thanks so much for providing such detailed technical and installation information. Very inspiring for a future owner-builder.

[AZAZ]

Thank you very much.
Cool! Great!
More and more R&D!
Standardization
Unification
Modularization

[Zenguin]

Hay is what is used in some animal feed, straw is the leftover byproduct that no animal eats. Besides some usage as a roughage an animal can starve to death eating it as it has almost no nutritional content. I'm sure most people consider it the same thing and he mentions its hay. I'm sure its just a slip of the tongue by the house owner but I thought it's important to point this out.

[janbrandjes]

Great video👍 looks like straw bale construction has matured! There is a lot of good info in this video and I hope to share some of it with my students who are learning about sustainability. It’s a shame that main stream construction is still a good decade behind other western countries in building science. We need to learn about the’ the house as a system’, which is shown in this video. Congrats to John for making the effort to produce this.

[EvilRace]

Thanks for sharing such detailed information. I am about to build a passivhaus in Spain and I am glad to see that I picked some common components and solutions. I have the feeling that many architects and passivhaus professionals keep that information for themselves in order to get as much profit as possible. However I think that is possible to share solutions for free and still get even more profit this way.

[stacyhackney]

Some really great systems, thanks for sharing. I wish your dog well. It's great when animals survive cancer.

[JohnReel]

Hi. Very informative video! Can you share the name of the "completely sealed treatment plant"? I'd like to look that up. Thanks!

[jameshopkins]

No air/oxygen in contact with the straw. Very well done. Never let any contact, or it'll burn.

[DROY]

First Rate! Real Class! Well done! Mate!

[emariaenterprises]

Cows don’t eat straw. They eat hay and alfalfa. Straw is the left over stalks from wheat.

[achopang]

When water does find its way to the strawbale will it rot?

[hu_b]

One of the benefits of a passive house type system people mention is that little added heat is necessary to maintain a comfortable temperature in winter. And they'll say body heat and heat from appliances and cooking etc. provide the majority of the heating needed. But if body heat and appliance usage has this effect, is cooling a passive house in hot regions a problem? I don't know what the summer temperatures are where this straw house is located but maybe this is why the water heater is located outside the house.

[woosddotcom]

With the exponential increase in wood construction materials in 2021/2022, I'd be curious if the 6% premium would still be present? I imagine this would now be a far less expensive way to build than a conventional house. He mentioned $500kAUD. That would be about $370kUS. I've been quoted $350/sqft for a conventional, (not premium) standard build.

[stacey]

Straw is not hay. Straw is what is left over when wheat, rice, barley, etc. are harvested and the grain has been removed. Livestock such as cattle don't eat straw, they eat hay. Straw is used for livestock bedding and is a byproduct of grain production. Other than that this video was informative and inspiring.

[monkeyross]

A question out of interest....If the straw in compacted to the point of there not being any air in it, would that make the insulation value worst than if it had been left non-compacted? (I honestly don't know. perhaps the fact that the walls are that thick it wouldn't matter perhaps?) Also if the straw is that compacted, how is it breathable? I ask only out of my own ignorance and the want of an answer as I plan to build my own house in the future.

[colonelbeatson]

my dad rendered that. australian render systems.

[josephdgomez]

Did I misunderstand what he said about the price? Did he say the total build was $25, 000?

[randomeverything]

R 6 Walls? are they using a different scale then in Canada? in Canada walls are around R15 in older houses.. I would expect a much larger number for such a think wall...Is the straw compacted too much?