Rosalba and I have met with Andrew form W D Architects yesterday afternoon.
Andrew was great and listened to all our dreams and wishes for our house and gave some great feedback on some of our ideas. For example we though we'd build the house using a steel frame but Andrew reckons that it will be cheaper more sustainable to build with timber, if possible with recycled timber even.
Rosalba would like a large walk in pantry in our new house, so we don't have to go shopping every couple of days and Andrew came up with a really neat idea of keeping the pantry cooler than the rest of the house. Basically you bury a ventilation pipe underground that comes out in the pantry and the pantry having some ventilation in the roof, which will draw cool air through the pipe buried in the ground into the pantry and the air that has warmed up is vented out of the roof. This, coupled with the insulation provided by the strawbale walls, should keep the pantry at a nice cool temperature all the time.
Andrew reckon's our budget is a bit tight but we should still be able to pull it of, especially if we provide some labour ourselves and save where we can.
As a bit of trivia: Andrew has designed the Australian Wildlife Hospital (as reported on Treehugger) which uses strawbale walls as well and is currently being finished.
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