Straw house, energy independent, completely natural, built by two young Romanians, who refused to take a loan at the bank!

A young couple from Turda built a house out of straw bales of wheat, in the vicinity of the ruins of a Roman castrum. Moreover, the house is almost entirely energy independent, the domestic water being collected from the raindrops, the electricity is obtained from the light captured by the photovoltaic cells and the heat saving is made through an insulation of the roof with newsflakes, and under the floor they used insulating panels from the refrigerated trucks.

But who are these two young men so daring? We are talking about Eliza Loboncz, a young screenwriter who decided not to resign herself in the face of the economic crisis that cut the budgets of theaters across the country, putting artists in an indefinite stand, but decided to get involved in an absolutely original project, through which she applied scenography in her own life! He builds a fairytale house, built of sun, rain, wheat, earth, located in a rural décor, despite its location, near the city of Turda.

While other couples would have chosen to give an advance on the purchase of a house in installments, for 30 years, pri Prima Casa. Eliza and her boyfriend Dragos, decided not to become slaves for life, and the house to be a safe place of refuge away from the threatening world of bankers.

And surprisingly they succeeded! Agro Intel asked her why she opted to use straws in the construction of the house. “For lack of money,” Eliza said.

“Rents and money that you invest in something that does not belong to you and you do not have the freedom to put something in it, to arrange a space. From there we came up with the idea and we started studying cheaper and at the same time environmentally friendly solutions and we found the straw house option. I studied for months. We opted for ecological materials, because you first take elements of nature that do not cost so much and you live in a much healthier space. We have looked for solutions in several corners of the world, that is, we are trying to orient ourselves and the climate as they stand as reliability and if there are many rainfalls, how they behave and what kind of resistance they have and from everything we have discovered, it is very resistant and seismic, the insulation is very good, the rains do not pose the problem, that is, resist, I understand that in time it requires some repairs, but it is not very clear to me. Now many details I can not give you, because we are beginners, I can only confirm to you that we worked like crazy”.

“The duration is the life of such a house is hundreds of years, There are several straw houses all over the world, which have lasted hundreds of years. And historic buildings with floors,” Eliza says after doing thorough research.

The house is quite small, has 48 square meters on the ground floor and a semi-attic of 11 square meters, a place where the bedroom will be. The surface fits somewhere between a two- and a three-bedroom apartment, but Eliza sees only the full side of the glass:

“But it will be autonomous and we will no longer pay for maintenance. We try to support ourselves, to be independent of all. The investments, except for the land I received from my mother, reached 15,000 euros, but including the project, everything related to the belt, poles, pillars, everything related to the concrete and wooden structure, roof, fence and this also includes solar panels and the entire electricity system. For solar panels the costs are somewhere around 1500 euros with batteries, current stabilizer and inverter. We will never pay for maintenance again, except for improvements to photovoltaic cells, which imbue after a certain time and the replacement of batteries at certain intervals, for better efficiency and so on. But other than that we’ll never pay. And we have another problem, which we found out about after the start of the project. According to the map of the underground springs, the area is very, very bad with water. I talked to a drilling company and they said there was no point in investing. That’s the biggest problem out there. We have the pipe beaten in the ground, but it gave very poor yield, and now we make a rainwater storage basin of 15 cubic meters, which is enough for the moment, and through the filtration system we will pump into the house and the domestic water comes recycled, goes to the plants and so on. We also thought about what we’re going to do if it doesn’t rain enough to fill our pool. In the worst case we are talking about the Roman waters and with the tanker is solved in an hour and is a small amount. To give maybe 200 lei to two months, it’s wow! It would be practically the only expense investment, but we hope that the water we collect from the rains will be enough and we will not give this money either.

Although there is no heating system, the straw house is so well insulated that the heating costs will tend rather towards zero. The walls are 60 centimeters thick, and the space between the ceiling and the tile is filled with a layer of 28 centimeters of insulation made of recycled paper flubs and treated against fire and pests. “At the roof insulation we also went on the idea of ecological. Cellulose is the most buae thing on the market, much better insulators than glass wool”.

For the insulation of dragos flooring, Eliza’s husband found another solution:

“I put a foil and after that from a company I took for free scraps of materials that are put on the bodies of trucks that carry perishable goods. Being scraps they had different shapes and sizes, so the pieces we spread them on the floor, made a puzzle out of them and over we put clay. Summer is cool and good, and last winter, with all the related gaps, while plastering we had over zero degrees and we could work without problems in the house. We are convinced that this winter, when we will already be moved altogether, it will be a very good comfort.”

The couple started the project somewhere at the end of June last year and are now at the stage of interior finishes. The foundation consists of 9 pillars that have as a cofrag three used shooting tires, placed on top of each other, and the walls are made of bales, which once plastered offer you the insulation and the wall in a unitary whole. However, it was not as easy as expected, and the actual building of the bales lasted almost an entire summer. “It was an interesting adventure and still is. I’m just hoping soon it’s over. A bale costs three lei. With transport with everything, which costs quite a lot, it reaches 4 lei. Straws are treated. As we build the bales we put lime, which is very good antiseptic and is treated by spraying, with flame retardant, antiseptic and antifungal solution. Over the house bales is plastered with a composition of clay, sand, horse dung and straw. When it dries we will paint with lime, lime, because for us it is very important that the pores do not close them and the house breathes. Then it works perfectly.”

The house, which is in the final stage of arrangement, impregnates by the organic shape of the walls, which although waves almost imperceptibly, give you the feeling of a warm place, born like a clay pot, literally from the toil of the hands. A third member of the echpa, without whom the house mission would not have succeeded, is “Vladimir”: “Vladimir is our power generator. It’s the collectible piece, I think the war has caught on. That saved us. He shoved the poor man like a hero. We took it with 3 million from scrapping from the army.”

Everything is organic and that’s why nothing is standard in dragos and Eliza’s house. For example, the plaster is from 1 centimentru to a few, depending on the needs of the wall piece, and next to the sockets appear small bumps of the wall, which give the place a special charm. Another important element, which is rarely realized, is the smell of the house, which any home has and which influences the mood of the tenants: ” It smells like natrual. The nearest thought is lost on a meadow in the mountains. Freedom and purity, this is what I absolutely feel through the texture and the state that the house offers you”.

When more straw houses in Romania?