This strawbale home was designed specifically for the clients’ lifestyle. It includes a library, crafts room, office and professional kitchen. Beautifully plastered straw bale walls contribute to its old-world appeal.

This home exhibits all the principals of passive solar design: Orientation, Ventilation, Insulation, and Mass. It utilizes southern orientation with properly sized window overhangs and heat-rejecting glass, proper ventilation including a whole house fan and solar powered attic fans, abundant insulation, and a high level of thermal mass (concrete floors and window sills etc.). Even in the hot north county climate, the house maintains comfortable interior temperatures with no air conditioning. The owner, a Cal Poly physics professor, is tracking the performance of the home’s passive solar functioning and photovoltaic system on a website: http://www.calpoly.edu/~rknight/StrawBaleHome.html

Adding to the home’s charm and a sense of whimsy are many locally harvested timbers put in place for the household cats such as tree trunks, catwalks above doors, small arched openings between rooms, and mailbox tunnels.