Home building takes innovative turn in town; a house that breathes

Age-old building technique brings modern sustainability to Crested Butte

It sounds like a technological marvel: a home where the walls filter and clean the air, and control the humidity in the room. But light clay straw homes do just that, and they are based on traditions that are hundreds of years old. They have living walls, in a sense, that breathe. Like an aquifer that filters water, they slowly but steadily filter the air. And the first of these is now being built in Crested Butte.

“Say you have a big party and you’re cooking up a feast, and there’s a lot of moisture in the air. The walls will naturally absorb it, and then when it gets really dry and cold it will let it back into the room,” said Don Smith of Smith Natural Homeworks. Smith and his crew are building a light clay straw home in Crested Butte, on Gothic Avenue across from Gothic Field.
“Most of my clients, when they walked into one that was finished and they felt the air quality, they were like ‘Wow, there’s something here…’ It’s like a breath of fresh air,” he continued.
According to Smith, everything he has read about clay straw homes suggests that the clay releases negative ions that stimulate the release of serotonin in the brain. That’s the “feel good drug,” he says, associated with waterfalls and the beach—anyplace where water moves naturally. Positive ions, by contrast, are put out by air conditioners and airplanes, places where air is recycled.
It’s one of the many things that make light clay straw homes—which are different from typical straw bale homes—unique. Smith and his crew break apart the straw bales and mix them with a clay slip, a liquid mixture made by breaking up loam (a natural mixture of sand, silt and clay) and dispersing the clay in water.
The crew packs the mixture into the wall cavities of the house, in this case 12-inch walls, thinner than the 18-inch walls in straw bale homes. Horizontal bamboo stabilizers support the straw and help with settling.
The result, says Smith, is a house that could mostly decompose naturally at the end of its life cycle. But it could also last for hundreds of years, as long as the roof and foundation are cared for.
“With the natural homes, we’re getting away from the cycle of foam and petrochemicals, and really trying to minimize that and mimic nature at the same time. There’s a lot of biomimicry associated with this building,” Smith said.
Smith first learned about the technique from Robert Laporte and Paula Baker-Laporte, founders of EcoNest, a resource dedicated to helping people develop sustainable housing. Laporte traveled to Germany, where people have lived in the same light clay homes for as many as 800 years continuously. There, Smith says, Laporte took one of the houses apart.
“He was dumbfounded at how incredible it was. They used willow sticks [instead of bamboo stabilizers], and this house was 800 years old and he cut into it with his pocket knife and the willow sticks were still not brittle because they get preserved by the clay,” Smith said.
Laporte taught both Smith and Wisconsin architect Lou Host-Jablonski how to build light clay homes. Host-Jablonski took the technique back to northern Wisconsin, where he and University of Wisconsin chemistry professor Douglas Piltingsrud have been furthering the use of light clay straw homes through projects like The Design Coalition and Affordable Green Housing. They have been teaching the technique to Native American tribes in the region, and Piltingsrud in particular has been advancing the science behind the walls.
 When Piltingsrud developed chemical sensitivities, he went in search of the best natural homebuilding techniques and settled on light clay straw. He has since determined the ideal percentages of clay that allow builders like Smith to decrease the overall mass yet increase the R-value, or thermal efficiency, of the wall.
The result is a convergence of tradition and modern science, and Smith now uses equipment and techniques from The Design Coalition to create his clay slip and mix it with the straw.
“Crested Butte is an extreme place, and this is an extreme natural home. We’re taking an age-old way of doing things and using what we have here in Colorado to do it,” Smith said.
The barley and wheat straw come from the San Luis valley, and the clay comes from Fort Carson. Most of the framing materials come from beetle kill in the I-70 corridor, and inside the home, the straw walls will be covered in natural plasters.
Smith will pair these nature-based techniques with leading-edge technologies, like photo-voltaic solar panels in the front of the house and a hot water solar heater in the back.
“It’s time to open our eyes more to what we can do as opposed to what we can’t do—nature really has the answers for us,” Smith said.
Smith’s interest in light clay straw homes stems from his interest in deep ecology, which fits well with his belief in the intrinsic value of nature; people are part of nature, not the center of it. He has built five light clay straw homes, including one in New Mexico and four in Colorado, including Paonia, Cedaredge, up the Slate River and the Roaring Fork Valley. So far the feedback is consistent: these homes stay cool in the summer and warm in the winter.
As Smith and his crew continue to build light clay straw homes (they have two more slated for Paonia), they’ll also continue to share information with The Design Coalition to push the building style forward.
“I think this is an advancement of natural materials, especially now with the science behind this,” Smith said. “We know what’s good for us and we know certainly what’s bad for us. Your finishes in your house should not be toxic… it’s just silly to be doing anything else.”