Straw Bale House near Przelomka
Przelomka, Poland (2000 - 2002)

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Tucked away in the northeasterly corner of Poland (which borders Lithuania) is what the city people call a small paradise. It's a folk gallery, a cultural center, where people meet. It's a place where people come all the way from Warsaw (5 hrs.) just for a sauna. It's a place of the gentle, magical hills, forests filled with wild strawberries, blueberries and mushrooms. Storks nesting on the rooftops of farm settlements. Where the winters are cold and severe and summers relatively short, but very warm. This region of Poland called 'Suwalszcsyzna' in the Village of Przetomkais the tiny stop over place called "Galeria Wiejska" Folk Gallery), situated on 20 hectares of beautiful landscape.

Two summers ago we visited this region and were asked by the owners of the Gallery, to return the following summer and build a little straw bale house. Last summer we spent 5 weeks building a load-bearing straw bale structure with a sleeping loft under the pitched, straw thatched roof and earthen plastered walls.

  

 

The construction of the small house in Przelomka is load-bearing. It stands on a stone footing, which in turn stands on a drained gravel trench. The walls were made of tightly packed bales of straw stacked and sandwiched between hazel branches for stability. A 'ladder' wall plate was placed on top of the wall and the structure was compressed with straps which are tied to the metal rods inserted in to the foundation.

  


Top of the field stone foundation
footing which has a trough of gravel towards the top allowing ventilation
in to the base of the bale wall.

 


Straw bale wall during construction

 

 

Timber wall plate being placed on top of the straw bale wall

A load bearing straw bale wall with the timber roof structure

Robert plastering the south wall using the earthen plaster

  An earthen bread oven in the forecourt constructed entirely out of earth and straw on a bed of stones

The structure had to be protected from
the rain during construction as moisture
is one of the biggest enemies of
straw bale construction.

On top of the wall plate was constructed a traditional roof by the neighbors using the traditional construction techniques. The timbers for the roof structure were taken from the local forest. The roof covering was made by the local crafts-man. Henryk Romanowski using wheat straw thatch. The walls were plastered with an earthen clay plaster outside and inside, which allows for a beautiful finish of curved and sculpted walls.

Since it rained all of the month of August when the straw is supposed to be gathered from the fields, the arrival of our straw bales was delayed by a whole month. With so little time before the cold weather hit we were forced to abandon the finishing process of earthen plasters and return to it next summer. We therefore have workshops scheduled throughout July and August for earthen floors and plasters to complete the house.

 

Maciej and Halina Mackiewicz in front of their new straw bale guest house.