Thursday 31st August – Sunday 3rd September Discover the progress of straw bale construction from single-family homes to affordablealternatives for various building types at ESBG 2023. Globally, central governments are announcing transformational declarations (‘net-zero’,‘decarbonisation’ etc) and the construction industry is speedily endeavouring to manage…

Comparisons with global climates revealed the unique challenge West Wales poses for strawbale construction. Many studies have focused on measuring internal humidity and temperature of strawbale walls to determine moisture content, however, these often lacked information specific to the climate of West Wales. Alex’s…

Securing finance to build homes that are energy efficient …better for the planet should be easy. Since 1987 Ecology Building Society have supported homeowners who #buildwithstraw We need mortgage products in-place to grow the market.

The video of our online event with George and his home, Old Holloway, is now on our YouTube channel Watch it here and share with your network!

Architect George Mikurcik began work on his home 14 years ago. It was the first Ecococon home built in the UK, is an award winning site and George will be discussing with us the concept, the build and sharing supporting data at our meeting….

YouTube video of our members’ meeting with Joe Giddings is available to watch here

Join us at our next Members’ meeting Special on Wednesday 9th November, 7pm – 8pm. Our guest speaker is Joe Giddings of ‘Built by Nature’ and he will be discussing, ‘Timber and Insurance‘. Many of you that are involved with the practical elements of building with low…

The video of our event: ‘MIscanthus – what it is and how can it benefit the sector?’ is now available to view. Thank you to our guest Fabrice Ntimugura for a brilliant presentation. Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/jr2dO29sXys

Did you know that Miscanthus has water vapour permeability properties compatible with that in traditional construction and sequesters carbon (around 130 kg CO2eq/m3)? Join us on Wednesday 6th July, 7pm (GMT) as we discuss the building potential in construction of this bio based material….

As part of my MSc in Green Building – Centre for Alternative Technology (cat.org.uk) at the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) we had great fun on the “Sustainable Materials in the Built Environment” module in May 2022 experimenting on site with clay, lime, hemp, straw, miscanthus,…

This report stresses that “from residential to commercial buildings, the UK’s built environment is responsible for 25% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions. The Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) warns that to date there has been a lack of Government impetus or policy levers to…

We are very excited to announce that the ‘Technical Guide’ for Straw Construction, is now out! The Technical Guide is a vital component within the EU-INTERREG funded project, ‘UPSTRAW’, the aim of which is to promote the benefits and good practice of constructing with…

Under the guidance of course leader, Hubert Gruber, our SBUK Director, Kit Jones, participated in the latest edition of the ‘STEP’ programme. STEP (Strawbuilding Training for European Professionals) is a strawbuilding course (online & practical) which is curated and led by qualified and professional…

In Winter 1993 a publication entered the built environment, etching its name as a hallowed journal for straw as a construction material – The Last Straw. Emanating from USA the first issue had a national/regional take on straw construction: structural testing in Tucson; construction…

For the first time this gives an accurate assessment of the environmental impact of straw production in the UK. This was made possible by the European Up Straw INTERREG funded project. Led by The School of Natural Building this Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) is…

Energising our buildings has never become more important than now. The savvy among you would have been content to be up to speed with an ‘EPC’ or ‘U-Value’ but nowadays, the general public in the UK are seeing terminologies such as, ‘Whole House Approach’,…

The School of Natural Building are working with Studio 3 Arts to build an extension on their community centre. Designed by architects company, Citizens Design Bureau and built by GPF Lewis and Wellspring Architecture, this is a transformation in London’s Barking and Dagenham. Read…

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A panel of expert speakers met last night to present the benefits of constructing with straw, the data behind the resources and the heritage of this natural building material in Architects Climate Action Network‘s (ACAN) Masterclass for Straw A captive audience, comprising of practioners…

Wow! Check out at the latest video update of the ‘Bale House’ by the Constrawtium team!

John Butler has been digging away in the vaults of Government data and statistics to ascertain the answer to one of the most often asked questions we receive, “Is there enough straw to build”? The figures are interestingly optimistic (we shan’t spoilt it for…

Great news! The partners of UP STRAW have collated, through the ‘Zoreto’ platform, an open source database of free reference management tools that allows the user to manage bibliographical data and documents such as websites, videos, scientific articles, books and PDFs. This will cover…

This is not a homage to the popular British sitcom, but a brilliantly sharp (and witty!) conversation with Ben Kerslake of Carrington Lime and Jeffrey Hart’s Building Sustainability Podcast Through his initial foray as a roofer, to the lessons learnt as a lime plasterer,…

Last year, SBUK member Dr Judith Thornton wrote a paper on Airtightness, of which we referenced here: https://strawbalebuildinguk.com/airtightness-and-natural-building-materials-by-judith-thornton Richard Dormandy has led the work on Holy Trinity Tulse Hill’s strawbale building, the ‘Neigbourhood Hub’, and you can watch The Holy Trinity ‘airtightness’ videos here:…

Wednesday 5th April Essential policies are vital for the construction sector to deliver strong guidance for climate action.Our event with Architectural Association School of Architecture for ‘Living Retrofitting Urbanism’ was a success – video will be available soon.