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EPHRAIM — When Matt Johnson received a heating bill for $500 one month, he thought it was ridiculous.
The father was living with his family in a 1,500-square-foot cinder-block house and decided they needed to find a way to lower the heating bill. The family added insulation in the attic, replaced the windows and used the wood stove more, but the heating bill remained high.
“I thought, ‘You know, if you really wanted to do this right you have to start from scratch,’” Johnson said. “So, I started looking into energy-efficient housing and came across straw bale and it just made sense.”
That idea came about eight years ago. Now, Johnson and his family are close to finishing their dream energy-efficient home in Ephraim. When completed, it will be just over 5,000-square feet to house Johnson and his wife, their six children and his in-laws.
While a contractor is doing most of the work on the home, the Johnson family has taken care of everything that involves the straw themselves. All of the work with the straw, which provides insulation for the home and serves as the base for the walls, needs to be done by hand.
“It’s a monumental task,” he said. “It’s a big house, for starters, but to do all of that straw bale and plastering and everything — it took a long time.”
Johnson said it took about 500 bales, which cost $2.50 each, to build the house. All of the bales were purchased from a farmer located about a mile outside of Ephraim. For the plaster, Johnson opted to use a clay-based mixture — meaning his family took dirt from their yard and then mixed it with water to strain it before adding in salt and straw.
College students from Snow College, where Johnson works, and other friends participated in big plastering parties. Johnson said some people thought it was so fun they came back for more.
“As we were building, you watch cars drive by and it was like the latest, greatest pastime in Ephraim was for people to slow down and stare at our house because it was so odd,” he said. “We’ve had all kinds of weird complaints. The city planner said he gets calls all of the time about whether or not the house is legitimate.”
Using straw bale is not the only design technique Johnson employed to make his home as energy-efficient as possible. It is also a passive solar house, meaning it takes advantage of how the sun works.
There is a large bank of windows on the south side in a greenhouse room that has a concrete wall, so in the winter when the sun is low on the horizon the wall will heat up and radiate warmth back off through the night. For the summer, the house has overhangs to prevent the sun’s rays from entering the windows to heat the house. On a day that approached 100 degrees, Johnson said it was a comfortable 75 inside without any cooling systems running.
“It’s just a smart way to build, and it blows me away that people just build these generic houses that cost a lot to begin with, but then they end up paying for the life of the house because of all the heating and cooling bills they have,” he said. “With this house, we’ll hardly have to heat or cool it.”
Johnson is also bringing a number of reclaimed elements into the home. He salvaged wood flooring from houses that were going to be torn down that were about 100 years old. He rebuilt salvaged doors and added stained glass. He’s making a concrete countertop with recycled glass in it, and all of the kitchen cabinets came from people who tore them out of their own homes.
Johnson estimated 80 percent of their lights came from the ReStore or Deseret Industries, in addition to all of their faucets, sinks and countertops. Their entire main floor only cost about $350 to make, including the rental of a concrete saw, because they decided to stain a concrete slab with fertilizer and cut lines into it to make it look like tile.
“Now that there’s Pinterest, you can find all of this stuff on Pinterest,” Johnson said. “When I first started doing this eight years ago, a lot of this information wasn’t readily available so I would go to a library and look at books and request books in and read from those … Now there’s tons of information available online. Anyone can find it.”
Construction of a straw bale house typically takes between nine months and a year, but the Johnson’s project has taken longer. They purchased the land for their home in October 2014, so they are eagerly awaiting the completion of the home.
While they were renting a home in Ephraim, they recently moved onto the house’s property to save money. All 10 people — including the six kids and two grandparents — have been staying in two camper trailers and a truck bed camper.
Despite the considerable effort required, Johnson recommended the project to others who are interesting in saving energy.
“The straw bale — maybe it’s a fad, (but) I don’t think it’s a fad,” he said. “I think that it’s a very viable way of building. The biggest problem with it is it’s labor intensive so if you paid a contractor to build it you would pay a ton, but if you do it yourself it’s just your time.”
Contact the author at ncrofts@ksl.com or find her on Twitter.
