The house that straw built
Straw bale-lined home is first of its kind in region
by KEN BARTOLOTTA Reporter
I n a world of Hummers, super charged SUVs and a constant threat of global warming lingering over our shoulders, it's always refreshing to find individuals who are mindful of their environment.

With the help of family and friends, Scott Redding has been able to do much of the building on the straw bale home himself, thus cutting the cost of construction by almost half.

The line between practical and the unserviceable becomes more distinct with each passing day, and this divide was one of the reasons behind Scott Redding and Sarah Buckley's building of a straw bale house in Wales.

The house is the first of its kind in Erie County and, according to Redding, was the fruition of a number of past experiences in the couple's life.

"I'd always been interested in architecture; it was what I wanted to do when I was younger," he said. "But instead, I became a sculptor."

Redding had always harbored the idea of building a house in the back of his mind, and further inspiration came from his travels abroad.

"The idea of the design came from my travels in Tibet and around southeast Asia," he said. "I was inspired by the sort of houses I saw in places like Asia, China and the Himalayas."

Hay bales, stacked neatly in one corner of the framed house, will soon be incorporated into the walls. The material helps keep the building costs down, and is also energy and resource efficient.

The idea of building it from straw bales came from Buckley, who took a class on spiritual building while in college, in which the group built a straw bale house.

The house itself is a simple frame structure, but the design isn't the only thing that's less complicated, Redding said, noting the environment friendly process the pair took to build it.

"It fit with our thoughts of building a house that would have a low impact on the environment," he said. "At this time, looking back on the past two years, there are some things that we could have done better as far as helping the environment, but it's a learning process."

Redding and Buckley have done the majority of the work on the house, with the exception of the foundation and the driveway.

However, assisting them throughout the entire process have been family and friends. They also put out a call for volunteers earlier this summer.

"We got about 10 volunteers to help us with it, along with help from our family and friends," he said. "A lot of the volunteers are also interested in doing something like this, so they wanted to see what the process was like."

According to Redding, it was reassuring to meet individuals who shared the same thought process on preserving the environment.

"One of the things that has come from this is that we've met like-minded people who are interested in doing things with the environment in mind," he said.

"We actually met a couple who are also from England, and they live about a mile down the road from us," said Redding, who originally hailed from England. "We wouldn't even have known them if it wasn't for this, and now they come and help out just about every weekend."

But what makes the house even more significant is the fact that it's the first of its kind in Erie County, something that Redding hopes will inspire others to become more environmentally conscious.

"I like the idea that people can come and see that there are more ways to build a house without using the normal conventional methods," he said. "All the houses around here are more or less the same, and this is something that's rather different."

At first unsure about whether to live in the house or sell it, the couple have now decided that two years of work have warranted its label as their future home.

"We had planned on building two houses and live in another one, but we've invested so much in this house, I can't imagine not living in it," he said.

e-mail: kenb@beenews.com