Ground-breaking straw house draws attention. Photos by Jocelyn Pederson.
2,700 square feet + 400 bales of hay + 24 red cedAr PILLARS = 1 happy new homeowner
the By Jocelyn Pederson
straw house in rural northeast Norman would make the wolf in the three pigs story weep—it’s spacious, well-built, charming and with an indoor safe room, no mat- ter how much huffi ng, puffi ng and blowing there is outside, the resi- dents don’t have to worry. “I love being in my house,” said Myr- na Fletcher, owner of the straw bale house. “The house looks homemade, handmade—and it is.”
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The house has been a long time in the planning and making. Fletcher, an Oklahoma Electric Cooperative member, said she saw a book with a straw bale house on it, nearly 20 years ago, and she picked it up and bought it. She remembers thinking that us- ing straw for insulation makes perfect sense.
“Straw makes wonderful insula- tion,” Fletcher said. “If you walk into a barn, you know what wonderful in- sulation it is.”
Having lived in smaller, traditional- construction homes throughout her life, Fletcher’s new, 2,700-square-foot home stays keep comfortably warm
36 OKLAHOMA LIVING
straw house
made of
and cool, using less energy than ever before. Judging by her heating and cooling bills, Fletcher knows she is onto something worth investing in. If the air conditioner is on, her home stays at an even 80 degrees even in the scorching Oklahoma summer heat. In the winter, without any assistance from a furnace, the inside temperature registers between 40 and 50 de- grees. These base tem- peratures keep her en- ergy bills down because the air conditioner and heater don’t have to work as hard to main- tain a comfortable temperature—like they did in her old farm- house built in 1905. Even after adding in-
sulation to her old home, Fletcher said the weather affected the inside temperature.
“If it was hot outside, it got hot in the farmhouse,” Fletcher said, adding that her energy bills are now half what they used to be. “What a blessed differ- ence this is. That says I did something right.”
Fletcher’s home is in an idyl- lic setting—atop a hill surrounded by land and llamas. She said be- ing encircled by beautiful red clay aided her decision to use it in the mud for her home. Having devel- oped a recipe for the perfect mud- to-sand-and-straw ratio, Fletcher has a fairly even red hue to her home. Of course, there are varia- tions, but that adds to the charac- ter of the hand-mudded walls. In an effort to use as many natural products as possible in building her home, Fletcher uti- lized approximately 400 stan- dard bales of straw; she also used 24, Oklahoma-harvested red cedar trees as pillars to support the house. Trees were cut down, stripped of their bark and ripped lengthwise to create the pillars. Being careful not to cut upper branches completely off, Fletcher invented ways to hang coats, pic- tures and other miscellaneous items on the stubs. She said it’s hard to drive a nail into the walls because the mud can crack and crater, necessitating a patch, which inevitably will not match in color because of
“When I walk in here I know I did something right.”
-Myrna Fletcher, owner of straw house
the mud’s natural dye lot. That said, her pictures and pretties hang majestically on red cedar stubs along the walls. Some manu-
factured mate- rials had to be used in building the house. Elec- trical wires were among them. A
common question Fletcher receives about her home is how electrical wires that run through straw keep from burning the house down if there were ever a short. Fletcher responds that straw does not have to be treated with fi re retardant in any way.
“It has been proven to be more fi re- proof than standard construction,”
Fletcher said. “Once the straw is sealed, there’s no air in there for fi re to go anywhere.”
Flooring was another consideration. Sand went on top of gravel and crush- er, which was enclosed in a concrete stem wall. Then, the mud was added. Fletcher chose to leave the fl oor-as-is with no tile or other coverings. How- ever, building code dictates that lum- ber within 12 inches of earth needs to be treated, so all the lumber support- ing the interior sheetrock is treated. Naturally, the safe room could not be made of straw. It is constructed with concrete and rebar to Federal Emer- gency Management Agency specifi ca- tions.
The steel roof has a heat-refl ective barrier to improve insulating proper- ties and 15 inches of insulation were added to the natural straw bales, which provide an approximate R-48 energy rating. Solar tubes were in- stalled to minimize the need to use electric lighting during the day. Among the few other manufactured items in the home are six corner posts and a laminated beam.
Fletcher’s home has been eight years in the making. She did much of the construction work herself with help from “umpteen million wonderful volunteers” including members of the Norman Sustainability Network who prepared gravel and, as Fletcher puts it, “worked like Trojans.” Members of the Okie Bale Heads Internet group, an architecture club that wanted to learn straw bale construction, came and received on-the-job-training by stacking and tying bales or mixing and spreading mud. Many friends and family, including kids and grandkids, helped too. Fletcher even had people from Kansas come to help. She said setting volunteers loose and having them smear the fi rst coat was easy, but getting the third coat on was a little tougher because it had to be applied with a trowel.
“There are areas where Myrna got tired and the mud isn’t smooth,” Fletcher said with a grin, adding how eternally grateful she is to all who pitched in on the tiring work.
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