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Walls That Breathe, Roofs That Live

By Kymberly Taylor

This 2,200-square-foot home insulated with straw bales was a novelty in 2000. Today, even with the explosion of the “green building” movement, it still is. Straw bale homes remain a minority in Maryland and in the Mid-Atlantic region compared to homes in other areas of the country, including the Southwest and West Coast, where they proliferate, according to statistics released by the International Straw Bale Rating Association. Demand drives production and Marylanders just haven’t caught on yet, despite straw’s ability, as an insulator, to reduce energy bills by approximately 78 percent. One reason is that more builders need to learn the trade, which is not complicated but does require a learning curve.

Precisely because Michael Furbish and wife Heather Bathon couldn’t find a contractor to build their home, they advertised on the internet for help, offering room and board (in their 1950s rancher) in exchange for labor. They were flooded with an eclectic mix of volunteers from as far away as Australia; some camped out in tents in the front yard. Furbish explains what they wanted to accomplish and why:

“We wanted modern conveniences, classic aesthetics, and sustainability. Unfortunately, conventional home building doesn’t offer such a product, but we marched forward naively committed to achieving these three goals.
After a fair bit of research, we found the solution in simple design and straw bale construction. Ironically, the first step toward all three goals was to build no more than we needed. Our house is a simple box with an open first floor that combines kitchen, dining, and living rooms in a single space. The upper floor contains three bedrooms, two baths, and a reading nook. The exterior look is reminiscent of the European farmhouse.

We embraced classic (simple) architecture. The modest size is fundamentally sustainable (i.e. fewer materials). From that starting point we gravitated toward straw bale infill with natural plaster finishes. This delivered super-insulated walls from locally grown and ever abundant wheat straw bales. With volunteers who answered an ad we placed on the internet for room and board in exchange for labor, and with family and friends, we built a special but still relatively simple post- and- beam frame. We filled it with 850 straw bales and then plastered them over with a mixture of earth and lime that, among other things, seals and waterproofs the straw. What is nice, though, is that the walls breathe. The bales allow a gradual transfer of air through the wall so the atmosphere is continuously refreshed and the room rarely feels stuffy.

Sure, there was extra work to resolve non-conventional details and significant searches to find qualified craftsmen to execute mostly forgotten trades (unique framing, straw bale stacking, earthen and lime plastering). However, there is nothing in this approach or structure that has prevented any modern convenience. We like having climate comfort from our radiant floor heat and standard A/C, but those systems run efficiently because we constructed a well insulated shell, or exterior, oriented for passive solar advantage. And there were also pleasant surprises like facing our fears to implement composting toilets only to find they work just fine and more pleasantly than conventional toilets. It was a problem, though, getting the plumber to figure out how to get three toilets to feed into one composter. The composters are designed for one toilet. This detail was a customization executed in the field. The research was done by me; otherwise it would not have been done. Another sticky issue was proving the reclaimed iron columns in the living roof were structurally sound. The architect and subcontractors were requesting that lolly columns be placed inside the cast iron columns just in case. This was ridiculous overkill, but would have been required if I didn’t push to use the cast iron columns “as is.” The living roof over the porch was pursued before the living roof industry evolved in the U.S. We researched it and executed it ourselves. There were no other parties around to do it.

This is where the volunteers came in. But the extra work not only resulted in a warm and inviting space, but it introduced us to wonderful, creative workers that have become cherished friends.



Though Michael Furbish and wife Heather Bathon had trouble finding contractors willing to build their straw bale house, locating an architect was easier—they discovered a kindred spirit in architect Marta Hansen, of Hansen Architects, whose studio is a light-drenched concrete block. “Michael looked up at the ceiling and just like that said ‘I want something like this,’” she recalls. Hansen, with input from Furbish and Bathon, designed what at first glance appears to be a conventional stucco European-style farmhouse. However, a closer look reveals much more. Sights include 22-inch-thick plaster walls, and window cutouts with edges that are flared or beveled to attract more light. The south facade is lined with stone terraces and windows doors to conduct passive solar heat. To the north, which receives less sun year-round, are a few small windows that provide some light and repel winter wind. They overlook a green roof planted with sedum, roaming chickens and a couple of peacocks—and a front yard transformed into a flower and vegetable garden. More scrutiny reveals that the home, an open-space rectangle, mirrors the geometry of a straw bale. “You don’t want to do too many curves, rounded walls, or jogs with a straw bale home…the less complicated the floor plan, the better,” says Hansen.

The house, at its core, is humble (straw is what’s left after grains such as wheat and rye are stripped from their stems). But Bathon, who recently co-founded a company that supplies nonprofits with green products for fundraising, filled the interior with unconventional (and often sustainable) riches: stairs painted in different colors inspired by a Florentine piazza; a concrete floor warmed by radiant heat and distinguished by a hand-painted mosaic; kitchen counters Furbish created from a high school’s abandoned science lab tables; and a fireplace mantel of Baltimore curbstone.

For the walls, Bathon imported most of the paints from Italy. Hand mixed from natural pigments, her colors defy the tame decor scheme found in most homes. Subtle color combinations and collisions recall the places that Heather roamed during her formative years, including Roman coliseums, rainforests of Brazil and India’s open-air markets where merchants hawk saffron, cumin, and turmeric alongside rare gems. Heather hand-painted on the foyer’s concrete floor a mosaic composed with over eight different colors that recall an ancient tiled city square. To seal the floor and add luster, she mixed floor wax with pigment and applied several coats.Color does not stop at either floor or walls and why should it? These earthy combinations and their variations seem almost infinite, as they are in earth, water, and sky. Stairs colors include rich blues, purples, yellows, and fuchsias. The entire downstairs is unified by ochre which accentuates the ceiling’s wood beams. Window frames are a Mediterranean olive. The mudroom, Venetian red, is the color of the inside of a blood orange. In the tiny downstairs powder room, Heather hung her grandmother’s teardrop crystal chandelier and a salvaged wrought iron fence, that in this setting, takes on a whole new life as decorative wall lacing. Amidst this casual glamour is a composting toilet encased in a polished, wooden box. Nearby is an alcove holding candles and a laughing Buddha. Jungle green walls are variegated with shades of “new green” that recall tender shoots. A wall mosaic glitters with broken ruby, emerald, and turquoise tiles and glass while a lemon “tree of life” bears fruit on one wall.

The kitchen, where chickens sometimes stroll in to visit (and are often fed by the couple’s young daughter Georgia), is distinguished by a giant overhead pot rack that was simply, says Heather “just some kind of gate.” A generous jelly cabinet below is a pantry and also provides storage. The dining space and living area contain vintage and consignment finds, salvaged materials, and family antiques. The coffee table, situated in front of the fireplace, is an old Brazilian ox cart wheel.

The dense walls absorb sound, so the house is very quiet inside. When you run your hand across the interior walls, they are cool to the touch. The exterior, because straw bales have absorbed more than two and a half inches of plaster, feel exactly like stucco. Further inquiry, as with the rest of this house, reveals subtle patterns in the plaster shaped by the straw behind, another hint of the unusual.

Kymberly Taylor, home editor for WhatsUp? Publishing, plans to hand-mix her own Italian bio shield paints at the very next opportunity. Visit this home Saturday, April 25 during the Historic Annapolis Foundation’s Green Tour, sponsored by WhatsUp?Annapolis.

Tags: straw walls apr 09 straw Furbish

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