The beautiful Sun, Straw and Earthen Floor home is one of our most unique home plans and is a true sanctuary for health and well-being. It has also attracted a lot of attention, and has been featured in the book, "The New Strawbale Home", on the cover and in a feature article in the March/April 2004 issue of Natural Home Magazine, as well as being featured on an episode of HGTV's Extreme Homes. As comfortable as it is innovative, this passive solar strawbale home boasts an entire wall of windows, designed to provide a seamless integration of living space with surrounding nature.

Softly curving plastered walls and earthen floors give a handcrafted and organic feel to the interior. The home has a spacious bathroom, sleeping loft with panoramic views, a corner fireplace, and a light-filled balcony overlooking the living room for office use or relaxation. A 27 foot high west wall allows for the feeling of spaciousness, while celebrating economy of space.

Strawbale walls maintain steady thermal comfort throughout the seasons while colder days and nights are remedied by the warm radiant heat under the soft and luxurious earthen floor, which resembles a fine polished leather. Exterior and interior walls are finished with a beautiful warm toned lime clay plaster providing a hand finished touch.

.Two of the most basic materials, earth and straw, provide the basis for this beautiful thick walled design. Besides being an extremely sturdy building method, strawbales provide excellent insulation for energy efficiency as well as a sound barrier. This home has a post and box-beam structure, and its extremely strong wood frame meets the most stringent of seismic codes. Interestingly, the strawbale is technically not factored in as a structural element in the wall assembly, but rather is considered to be an "infill" between the post and beam frame. This is actually the most common way strawbale homes are designed, because it allows the home to be permitted and built in areas where load-bearing strawbale homes are not allowed. It also allows for substitution of the strawbales with nearly any kind of insulation should your climate or local building codes dictate a change.

With Sun, Straw and Earthen Floor, pioneering designer Darrel DeBoer has rediscovered the environmental and aesthetic virtues of thick walled homes - resulting in gentler, greener architecture that relies on plentiful and renewable materials.

An expanded version of this home plan has recently become available. To see a 3 bedroom 3 bath version of this beautiful home, click here to go to Sun, Straw and Earthen Floor 2.