Building with Bales in Belarus

by Yevgeny Shirokov

In Belarus, a coalition of local and international NGOs is proving that straw-bale houses are to be taken seriously. Environmentally friendly and energy efficient, these homes are a sound way to provide affordable housing. In Belarus there are plans to use this technology to construct homes for children forced out of their homes due to the Chernobyl disaster; neighboring Ukraine is considering the use of straw-bale houses in resettlement communities for Crimean Tartars. The Belarusan economy is in a state of crisis and cheap and well-insulated houses are much needed.

In August 1996, three organizations, the American organization Solar Energy International, the Belarusan branch of the International Academy of Ecology and Minsk Ekodom conducted a straw-bale house-raising seminar in Zanaroch, an experimental environmental village. The 13 seminar participants included representatives of NGOs and government construction companies from Ukraine, Russia and Uzbekistan. Zanaroch was chosen because a German-Belarusan organization, called A Home in Place of Chernobyl, has been working there for the last six years to build an environmental village for Chernobyl refugees using clay-straw technology. The village already includes 17 buildings and is becoming a testing ground for environmentally sound technologies for sustainable development.

More than 70 percent of the radiation that escaped from the Chernobyl Atomic Power Station fell on the territory of Belarus-an amount equivalent to 50 of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima. People who are still being displaced from the contaminated area need environmentally safe, energy efficient, inexpensive housing. Straw-bale technology meets these requirements.

It is also meaningful that the international community is collaborating in a country that has seen the fiercest European and world wars. During the work to prepare the foundation for our straw-bale building, hundreds of shell fragments and casing were found, along with bits of human remains of those who died here fighting each other and nature. It was here that weapons of mass destruction-military chlorine-based poisons-were first used. Now people from different countries are coming together to advance the international movement for sustainable development, which promotes technologies friendly to both nature and humanity.

The project itself did not have an easy beginning. The initial budget was several times too low. Fortunately, an agreement was reached with German partners to provide the basic construction materials at no cost, and the project was saved.

The weather was the second serious obstacle. The grain crop in Belarus in the summer of 1996 was running three weeks late, and the project had to make use of the previous year's hay. What could have been a disaster ended up proving the feasibility of forming bales from piles of old straw, which are common in the FSU. The bales were prepared in two days, and the home itself was built in just a week. The detail work on the home had to be done after the seminar, in September.

Attempts to interest government agencies in this technology proved unsuccessful until an appeal was made directly to the president of Belarus. Following an order from the presidential administration, representatives of the Ministry of Construction and Architecture visited the site in October. What they saw in Zanaroch significantly changed their ideas about existing and proposed construction technologies. As a result, a national program is being developed for the construction of 12 demonstration straw-bale and straw-clay houses in Belarus, two in each region of the country. Further government support came in January 1997, when the city of Minsk granted land to the International Academy of Ecology to build a demonstration zero-energy straw-bale house, featuring a domestically produced solar water heater on the roof and permaculture landscaping with water reuse and efficiency systems.

More than 100 building firms and NGOs in Belarus and more than 20 in Russia and Ukraine have requested copies of the Russian version of Build It With Bales, an instructional book by S.O. MacDonald and Matts Myhrman that was translated as part of the project. Distribution of the book is ongoing at conferences and gatherings, and we hope to expand these distribution efforts into other NIS countries, using workshop participants to help promote the book. Visitors, both private citizens and representatives of professional construction firms, continue to travel to Zanaroch to tour the village and our straw-bale structure.

Having made successful use of the straw-bale technology in Belarus, we now plan to outfit straw-bale houses with our inexpensive solar collectors. Calculations show that these types of homes could have zero energy requirements. The International Academy of Ecology has published a small booklet comparing the economics of a straw-bale home with a typical home of the same size built with conventional materials. This book is an invaluable part of persuading government officials and private citizens of the benefits of straw-bale construction.

 

 

 

A Brief History of Straw-Bale Building

The saga of building human habitation with rectangular bales of hay or straw begins with the availability of mechanical devices to produce them. Hand-operated hay presses were patented in the United States before 1850, and by 1872 one could purchase a stationary, horse-powered baler. By about 1884, steam-powered balers were available, but earlier horse-powered versions also continued to be used in the Great Plains at least through the 1920's. We will probably never know any details of the first bale-walled buildings used to shelter human-beings. It seems likely, however, that its creator was a homesteader, recently arrived on the grasslands of the Great Plains and in desperate need of quick, cheap protection from a harsh climate. Although homesteading came to the Sandhills of Nebraska later than other parts of the Plains, it is here that we find the first, documented use of bales for building. The one-room schoolhouse, built in 1896 or 1897 near Scott's Bluff, survived only for a few years before being eaten by cows. Aided by extensive coverage in newspapers and magazines (e.g., The New York Times, National Geographic) and on television, the revival of bale construction has generated pockets of almost religious fervor in locations around the world. As of April 1994, Out on Bale had documented more than 150 bale structures built since 1940 in Australia, Canada, Chile, Finland, France, Mexico and the United States. New buildings have been going up in a wide range of climates, faster than any-one is recording them. The unique combination of environmental, socio-economic and natural resource issues facing our species as we approach the 21st century challenges us to expand the choices that will lead us toward sustainable systems. We see this legacy of bale construction, passed on to us by our homesteading ancestors, as one such choice, a beautiful baby that got thrown out with the bath water, but managed not to go down the drain.

- from Build with Bales by S.O. MacDonald and Matts Myhrman

Yevgeny Shirokov is on staff at the Belarusan branch of the International Academy of Ecology, Minsk. Louie Saletan of Solar Energy International also contributed to this report. Translated by Andrew Reese. Solar Energy International, P.O.Box 715, Carbondale, CO 81623; phone: (970) 963-8855; fax: (970) 963-8866; e-mail: sei@solarenergy.org

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