Straw Bale Calculations
Intro
- This page calculated how much straw is harvestable from roadsides.
Calculation
Combined with the Road article that indicates 13M acres of available roadsides - and bale density of 110 kg/m3, [1] - and a bale yield of approximately 2 dry tons per acre [2] - we have:
- 26 million tons of bales potential from an unused resource
- 236 million cubic meters of bales
- 19" straw bales (~50 cm) - R27 [3]
- One cubic meter of bale gives about 2 square meters of wall insulation for 50 cm walls.
- Take Seed Home - 3000 sf of wall (all-enclosing) or 300 m2, or 150 cubic meters of bale.
- This suffices for about 1.6M new homes. This is more than enough for all new USA construction of 1.2M homes. [4]
- In the USA, 5.4% were owner-built in the USA - [5], so about 65 thousand homes.
- Supply of straw is amply more than sufficient to meet all owner-built homes, which is OSE's target market demographic.
