Saturday, February 5, 2011

Straw Bale Coop

When you live off the grid you are required to have chickens. It is a rule.

I wanted the coop to be super insulated, and with a small footprint so I would not have to provide a heating source. That is what I told C, but really I just have been itching to build something out of straw. I read a number of books on the subject and then ignored almost all advice, as all good almost architects should do. I only found two books that gave enough information and details to actually be able to build a structure. I highly recommend them if you are planning to undertake such an adventure.



We cut a platform from a deck that had collapsed the year before we bought the house. The previous owner had left it in the woods.

Then we stacked the bales. Sounds easy right. It wasn't. Despite getting all our bales from the same place there was a length difference ranging up to about 6 inches. After about two hours and one un-baled bale, we ended up stacking the last two bales end to end. As you can see from the photo, they didn't compress the same and we had to do a little blocking to get the roof level. It still looks off in the photo but it is just the angle.


LOOK CHICKENS!!!
I almost did an entire post about a chicken coop with out a single picture of our chickens. They watched (Read: were in the way) the entire time their new house was being constructed.


Wednesday, May 5, 2010

The First Winter

I think it is safe to say we have officially survived the first winter here in between trees. It wasn't as tough as i expected, mostly due to the mild winter the 802 had this year. Although its wasn't tough, it didn't go smoothly either.

Our system is designed to power the house for three days with no sunshine. Due to some unforeseen problems the generator ran almost every day. Translation: We went through a lot more propane than anticipated, plus the addition wear and tear on our battery bank and generator.

I know what you are thinking, but "we" weren't the problem. Our daily electricity use was actually much lower than we predicted. The house, or more the systems to run the house, are the watt hogs.

I will be going through each problem in separate posts as we hopefully find solutions.