Natural fiber insulation allows moisture transport in the right assembly. If you control the other variables like rising damp and other failure points of existing buildings, you may have dryer walls with insulation than without.
bsky.app/profile/mich...

@michaelburchert.bsky.social Keep up the good work Michael!

We need this information. Bringing knowledge and sharing ideas, this is the essence of ambassadorship. I am inspired to build in wood and straw thanks to your posts.

@michaelburchert.bsky.social Right on target!

It's not just that we should build more efficiently, it's that we have to stop using sprayfoam and vinyl siding and vinyl-clad windows and "luxury" vinyl flooring and rigid poly panels and "asphalt" roof shingles.

Builders change very slowly. They […]

@ai6yr hey Ben, we do compost too. Hard to get to good volumes of input materials on just household waste.

We have a Patriot electric chipper shredder which helps - pruned limbs, broken twigs, Fall leaves all help add bulk carbon, but hard to get Green material in volume. For a while I had a […]

@chrisnelder One of the NPR shows had an oil industry expert on saying 1) none of the majors are interested; 2) market can’t support the needed investments; 3) OPEC was increasing production despite low market prices to suppress any new entry.

@michaelburchert.bsky.social we have used cassette-style heads in some installations and they are stylish and feel like they do a better job for distributing the conditioned air.

One thing our US builder partners have struggled with is planning for maintenance access to things like the […]

@ifixcoinops @TransitionShow “just getting on with the job” should be the Transition Show’s tagline

The antithesis of fake news. @chrisnelder does the hard work and we’re all smarter for it.

@michaelburchert.bsky.social Right -- these tools (apart from maybe the baling compressor) look like they come from the home improvement store. Maybe the string trimmer guys weren't thinking that the machine would be used for surfacing straw walls but that's what's so awesome --- no special tools!

@michaelburchert.bsky.social what's interesting to me is that the process is "modern", in that it's large scale, it's organized (i.e it's being done by a commercial crew at commercial scale) and it makes sense -- the preinstalled retaining straps make so much sense.

I'm guessing the bale size […]

@michaelburchert.bsky.social Looking at some of the videos of the assembly process, it's clear to me (as a complete strawbuilding novice) that modern lightweight tools are a big part of the ease of assembly of the straw blocks.

I saw a handheld circular saw, a riveting tool for the plastic […]

@ai6yr Reminds me of the time when I was in the military learning Morse. Being the military, we were on the training tapes eighteen hours a day.

After a week, lying in my tent in the bush, listening to the sounds of nature, I started to hear the bees sending five-letter code blocks -- bzz-bzz […]