As student projects go, building a house takes beating. But this weekend in Mallow, Co Cork, Rob Hopkins' students will be putting the finishing touches to a strawbale house.
The house will then be one of the central attractions of the Mallow Homes and Gardens Festival which runs from June 21st to 24th.
The students have been learning about the technique of straw building in a series of three weekend workshops headed by Mr Hopkins, permaculture designer and teacher in the discipline of sustainable structures.
Mr Hopkins has been demonstrating to students the art of building with straw, an agricultural by-product which among other things is easily available, eco-friendly and heat-efficient. Strawbale building has been gaining popularity in Ireland over the last couple of years, with homes in Monaghan, Mayo, Leitrim, and Belfast. Planning permission is pending for a strawbale house in Waterford. The actual structure (six metres in diameter) has been erected by the students at Cork Racecourse, and when finished it will be used for corporate entertainment there. While these houses are traditionally rectangular, Mr Hopkins has opted for a circular building with a turf roof which
he felt would be more striking as a permanent structure for this particular setting.
The weekend workshops started with a slide show of the actual process, from concrete foundation to finish, before participants had hands-on experience in the art of building a wall with straw bales.
"The beauty is you can get friends and family around to help because it's a quick enough process to maintain their interest, so you don't find them wondering off," Mr Hopkins says. "The attraction of physically building your own house is that you are more in control than many other people in the market today - it's a very empowering feeling in that way."
Over the weekend, Mr Hopkins and his team hope to render the outer walls of the house with lime. The workshop will address the concept of dry sealing the structure and making it heat efficient. "Sometimes people have the idea that you can go for it without planning the process. They have to understand the material first; it has its limitations as with any building material, and it behaves in a different way to other products," he warns.
Mr Hopkins believes anyone interested in building their own sustainable home would be well-advised to help someone else build theirs first. "When I helped out on a strawbale house in Clones, Co Monaghan, back in 1997," he recalls, "we didn't have a clue what we were at - we stood around scratching our heads and reading out of books, which meant the walls and foundation of the structure took about a week each, and the roof about a year."
No quicker than a normal house to build, strawbale houses are estimated to be three times more energy efficient than their traditional counterparts. When asked what advice he would give to anyone starting out, Mr Hopkins says: "Go for it, but do it properly!"
With over 26 display gardens being built or made over for the festival, visitors will also get to see several other art forms, including chainsaw wood sculptures using wood from sustainable sources, "green statues", iron art and seminars on recycling and feng shui.
Contact: Mr Hopkins. Tel: 021 47001. Course cost is £120
Mr Hopkins teaches permaculture design and practical sustainability at Rossa College in Skibbereen and this September will be teaching a full time course in Sustainable Land Use Management at Colaiste Stiofain Naofa in Cork.
Mallow Homes and Gardens Festival Tel: 01 473 3584
