Straw Bale in Gisborne

Straw Bale in Gisborne

A Prometheus loan has helped a young couple, Sarah and Aaron Boyle, realise their dream of building a Straw Bale home on their rural property in Hexton, just outside Gisborne.

The couple share a strong passion for the environment and wanted to live their lives as much in accord with that as possible. Consequently, in addition to building an environmentally friendly house they also had plans to develop some of their property for organic produce with the remainder to be planted in natives. 

Sarah is a marine biologist with a PhD from the University of Nottingham and had worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Universities of Nottingham and Glasgow. Aaron is a qualified stoneworker who has gone from being a contract worker to establishing his own stonewalling business, Hexton Stoneworks, over the past few years.

In the year between their first enquiry and the full application at the end of 2006 Sarah and Aaron had finalised their house design in consultation with straw building design company Sustainable Structures. The house included double-glazed wooden joinery, solar hot water, woodburner and wetback integrated into the solar HWC, rainwater collection, and installation of an Auto-flow Vermi-composting unit.

With a young child and an anticipated need for additional space in the not too distant future they have had the house designed so that it is easily extendable as their budget allows in future. For the present they have kept the house relatively simple so that they are not overburdened with debt at this stage.

The building work was contracted out to Straw Built Homes, a sister company to the design company, based in Opotiki on the East Coast. Work started in early 2007 and was finished very much on schedule and in line with budget six months later.

Prometheus was pleased to be able to help this young family achieve their goal of building an energy efficient home.

                     

If you would like more information on Sustainable Structures or Straw Built Homes information about both can be found on the latter's website, www.strawbuilthomes.com