The strawbale houses. Environment and energy conscious buildings

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Article Title:	The strawbale houses. Environment and energy conscious buildings
Authors:	Titusz Igaz, Krisztina Szirtesi, Gyula Lakatos
Affiliation:	1Department of Applied Ecology, University of Debrecen, Hungary 2Department of Architecture, University of Debrecen, Hungary
Abstract:	About half of the energy used all over the world is generated during constructing and maintaining buildings. The energy rate of maintaining is much bigger than the energy rate of constructing in case of the houses of the recent decades. As the energetic features of today’s buildings increase, the importance of the inbuilt energy increases as well. It is not enough to be energy conscious; we have to consider the environmental aspects too. The environmentally friendly house has got small ecological footprint like strawbale houses. The first strawbale houses were built in Nebraska in the end of the 19-th century. Since then thousands of them have been built worldwide, from which the oldest ones are more than 100 years old and are still inhabited. Nowadays more and more strawbale houses are being built all around the World. The importance of ecological buildings increases today, because most of the people have recognized that we have to do something against the climatic change. Houses, made of strawbales, are really environmentally friendly. It is very few energy needed to build and maintain them, because they are made of a cheap, natural material which has got excellent thermal insulation features. In Hungary there are only one or two dozens of them. The reason of it is very complex: obscurity, judiciary problems and lack of test results. During examinations we would like to review the inland situation, and find out what to do for the spread of this technology. We will especially focus on the tests and examinations, which are needed to get know much more information of these houses. We would like to compare the strawbale houses with conventional ones concentrating on ecological and sustainability questions beyond the standard technological and architectural aspects.
Keywords:	strawbale house, sustainable architecture, environmentally friendly building
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*Correspondence:	Titusz Igaz, University of Debrecen, Faculty of Applied Ecology, H-4032 Debrecen, Egyetem Tér 1., Debrecen, Hungary, Tel: 0036-30-234-989-0, e-mail: igaz.titusz@gmail.com