Straw Bale Calculations

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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:

  1. 26 million tons of bales potential from an unused resource
  2. 236 million cubic meters of bales
  3. 19" straw bales (~50 cm) - R27 [3]
  4. One cubic meter of bale gives about 2 square meters of wall insulation for 50 cm walls.
  5. Take Seed Home - 3000 sf of wall (all-enclosing) or 300 m2, or 150 cubic meters of bale.
  6. This suffices for about 1.6M new homes. This is more than enough for all new USA construction of 1.2M homes. [4]
  7. In the USA, 5.4% were owner-built in the USA - [5], so about 65 thousand homes.
  8. Supply of straw is amply more than sufficient to meet all owner-built homes, which is OSE's target market demographic.