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Straw set for take-off with Flying Factories
SLEEPING GIANT: Straw is rapidly becoming a major resource for the construction industry and has all the green credentials. Picture: James Hardisty
Prefabricated buildings made from straw could prove a winner for farmers. Cath Harris reports on a Yorkshire success story.
When foot and mouth floored rural communities in 2001, farmers were urged to diversify and they did.
Some converted barns into bed and breakfast accommodation. Others made their livestock operations organic.
Unused haylofts were transformed into classrooms, native trees planted and hay meadows nurtured under Government-backed environmental schemes.
Now a new tide of innovation is sweeping Yorkshire requiring little or no investment from farmers: houses, study centres and business parks are being built from straw.
And it is not just the raw material that farmers provide. Whole farmyards are being transformed into straw-build factories with machinery, haulage and labour sometimes hired too.
John Broadfield is the latest Yorkshire farmer to benefit.
He is renting space to a Bristol-based company called ModCell.
“I went out of dairy farming because the milk price was too low, which left a lot of buildings unused at this time of year,” John says.
“Farmers are diversifying to survive and I use straw for livestock anyway. I like the sound of straw-built houses.”
John’s Chidswell Farm near Dewsbury has become the workplace for 15 outside craftsmen supervised by ModCell’s site manager, Peter Homer.
It is what the company calls a Flying Factory – a term it has trademarked – which it sets up in a radius of about 10 miles of where the straw buildings are to be erected.
Peter, who comes from a farming family and is a rural development specialist, explains the space they use depends on the size of the job.
John Broadfield’s is the third Yorkshire farm he has used.
In 2006, when straw wall panels were required for a pioneering eco-depot for City of York Council they were built in an Easingwold farm 12 miles away.
“I used labour, haulage and straw from Easingwold and must have put in between £15,000 and £20,000 to the farm,” says Peter.
“That project set the tone for the how we run things now.
“Farms have a very good range of facilities, they’re very comfortable with the idea of straw and I am comfortable with them.
“We pay well and I have never had a farmer turn me down on cost.
“People assume straw building is deep green and hairy but it’s actually been done for centuries.”
Earlier this year, straw panels for a research and development centre at Barnsley College were made at a farm in Wakefield.
The present work at Chidswell farm is for a Bradford business park requiring 199 wall panels made from 2,500 bales of straw.
Peter says farms are ideal for the task for a variety of reasons.
“For city centre developments you can’t have lorry loads of straw dumped anywhere. So we build the panels in a barn and transfer them to the site.
“There can be more of a fire risk at industrial premises where I’d have to bring in the electricity and water supplies myself.”
For the Barnsley College job, 400 bales of straw were brought from John and Alan Wainman’s Milestone Farm at Newport near Brough in East Yorkshire. They are in a minority of farmers who produce the small-sized bales required.
John Wainman says, “Not many people make the little bales because there’s a lot more work involved and they’re more expensive. We have a small baler.”
He adds that straw is a good trade for him and he has no problem selling it.
Availability could dwindle this year however because of the spring drought.
The Bradford business park is three times bigger than any previous ModCell job.
It is Andy Dale’s second for them. A boat builder by trade from Sheffield, Andy helps construct the tall timber frames enclosing the compressed straw bales which are first pinned together with broom handles and trimmed to a uniform width.
It takes two days to make one panel, which is waterproofed with lime render. When there’s a lorryload ready, they are shipped to the building site.
Yorkshire is leading the way is exploring the possibilities of straw. Nick Cheffins is managing the construction of Europe’s largest load-bearing straw building, which will be in East Yorkshire.
It’s a new pavilion for the Driffield Agricultural Society and Nick believes the benefits of straw are not sufficiently appreciated because it’s still seen as quirky and fun.
“We need to increase awareness that it’s not difficult to build with straw and get the demand and supply side sorted out,” he says.
“Straw is local and has a brilliant carbon footprint.”
A society in Leeds called the Low Impact Living Affordable Community (LILAC) has also taken practical steps to exploit the value of straw.
Earlier this year, LILAC won planning permission for 20 affordable flats and houses on a former school site in Bramley, to be partly funded by the Homes and Communities Agency.
The group has appointed ModCell to build its wall panels and Chidswell Farm is potentially the Flying Factory where they will be made.
Paul Chatterton, of Meanwood, Leeds, is a co-founder of LILAC and is enthusiastic about the use of straw.
“It’s a locally sourced renewable material form Yorkshire which is really satisfying,” he says. “You can’t tell that buildings are made of straw and the beautiful thing is that with lime render they can look rustic, or smooth and professional. Straw is a revolutionary building material right here on our doorsteps.”
The use of local resources is not the only benefit that straw-build projects are bringing.
Peter Horner points out that the presence of a Flying Factory means “we’re recycling money for food and petrol in local communities”.
Specifically, he means the cash that his workforce is spending on site in the farm shop at Chidswell Farm.
John Broadfield is expanding the shop, a move that could prove timely if the farm is used for the LILAC development.
A further fascinating innovation is that LILAC plans to invite Leeds residents to take part in the building work.
“We’ll be putting a call out to anyone who wants to learn about straw and help us out for a week,” Paul Chatterton says.
GREEN LIGHT FOR GREEN HOMES
Straw has exceptional insulating properties which could cut heating bills by 80 per cent.
Straw homes have also been around a long time. Farmers in America’s mid-west were the first to build them and a century later they are still there and still being lived in. The Amercan farmers’ experience has shown common misconceptions to be untrue. Straw buildings are not a fire risk, they don’t provide a home for vermin, and they do last. The big question, perhaps, is why we haven’t got cracking with them before?
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