Straw House

Former neighbors in Wisconsin built a straw house two decades ago. Still standing, good as new (and a heck of a view from 600' over the mighty muddy).

When I worked for Sweetheart they were making the styrofoam clamshells for McDonalds. McDonalds was very fussy about the exact color. It was all virgin material as in it had never left the plant but the flawed parts were ground and fed back into the process. The color McDonalds specified was a result of a certain percentage of regrind. If the process was running good and there wasn't much regrind the clamshells could get too pale rather than their usual bachelor beige color.

Those were the good old days when they bought Freon by the railcar.

The best part of the job was the rejects off the sugar cone line... A sugar cone starts off with something that looks like a commercial taco line before they're rolled so if you snagged one that hadn't filled properly it was still warm and soft.

What is this "vapor barrier" of which you speak? ;)

The builder of our house nailed up the vintage 1947 drywall and skim-coated it with plaster. At some time later (I conjecture) someone blew in loose insulation. Certainly the bottom layers have vermiculite mixed in, which suggests asbestos. Perhaps during the 1970s energy crisis?

We're not as humid as you are, but we still consider 50% R.H. a nice, dry day.

Cindy Hamilton

I think the 70s is when the boom in the shredded newspaper insulation started. It was seen as a win-win. Newspaper was not worth enough as scrap to truck very far and it had some insulating properties. I wouldn't even bet this crap I have was treated with anything. I talked to an insulation company and they wanted more to remove this than they charged for the new insulation. Having a 2.5 : 12 roof pitch doesn't help. It will be very hard to get more than about half of it. This house really doesn't have much insulation at all anyway. There is none in the walls. It was built before AC was a real thing and we don't use much heat here. I am sure we have ever had the central heat on (toaster wire in the air handler). The wire in the thermostat wasn't hooked up from about 10-12 years ago when we put in the new system. I found it hanging when I was working on something else.