Published: July 19, 2008 12:00 am            

Hay, look me over

Energy-efficient house is nearing completion

Myrna Fletcher wants you to know that you, too, could build a straw bale house.

The energetic great-grandmother is closing in on her dream of living in an energy-efficient straw bale house -- a dream that's taken about three-and-a-half years so far to build, mostly by hand.

Outside it may be steamy, 90-plus degree July days, but it's considerably cooler inside her Southwest-themed, 2,700-square-foot northeast Norman house. There a couple of layers of Oklahoma red mud mixed with sand and chopped straw cover the straw bales, lovingly applied by Fletcher, friends and family including several grandchildren.

"It has the heart of everybody who's worked (on it)," she says, noting a hand print here or a grandson's name there.

Fletcher laughs her infectious laugh when she talks about why she'd do such a thing.

"No. 1, to get (Oklahoma Electric Cooperative) out of my pocket," she says.

Fletcher regularly gets the jokes about the three little pigs, huffing and puffing and blowing her house down, which sits perched on top of a hill on 24th Avenue NE down a crepe-myrtle and rosemary-lined gravel driveway.

That won't happen. She has a nice, concrete safe room built in the middle of the almost-finished house, complete with bathroom facilities.

The retired registered nurse, who was transplant coordinator at OU Health Sciences Center in the '70s and '80s, got the idea to build a straw bale house about a dozen years ago when she first read "The Straw Bale House," authored in 1994 by David Bainbridge, Bill Steen and Athena Swentzell Steen, with David Eisenberg.

Fletcher worked on educating herself on how to build a straw bale house, attending seminars and absorbing ideas wherever she found them.

"I had to learn along the way," Fletcher says.

And she helped friend April Harrington build her straw-bale-constructed bakery in Lexington.

Fletcher had heard about Norman-based architect Dave Boeck and thought he just might be interested in designing her unique structure.

"Dave was ready to think outside the box," Fletcher says.

She had ideas about what she wanted and Boeck put them into design form.

He also had her prepared when she brought her plans to the City of Norman for a building permit, toting the California Straw Bale Code in hand and providing examples from other places like Arizona, New Mexico and Austin, Texas.

"The City has been fantastic to work with," Fletcher says.

She's hired her own subcontractors and has looked for people who shared some of her vision.

"I haven't gone with the low bidder," she says. "That's got me people who've done an excellent job."

Fletcher's goals all along have been to build an energy-efficient house using local materials, avoiding shipping and with as much wood and concrete as possible.

And she made sure her house will be wheelchair accessible for friends with disabilities, making all doors wide enough to fit a chair through easily. That's also called Universal Design, although Fletcher didn't know it at the time.

She says she wanted to use straw because of its sustainability.

Fletcher was disappointed when she had to get the stunning red cedar tree trunks that stand majestically throughout her house, from ravines in western Oklahoma, where they grew a little bigger and a little straighter than those on her 30 acres.

She spent months in her barn power washing and sanding them, sealing them with seven coats of polyurethane. The ends were milled so the connectors would fit.

The cedar trunks provide a Southwestern flavor to the house, next to the red mud walls.

Fletcher says the first coat of mud mixture on the straw bales tends to crack, with the second coat making a solid base. The final coat will be of lime and sand to weather-proof the house.

For now, the floor is gravel-covered. It eventually will be brought to the bottom of the straw bales, mud will be applied along with river rock and it will be sealed.

Fletcher has been paying for her house as she goes and has about $160,000 in it to date. She figures she'll have to spend about another $40,000 to $50,000 to finish it.

"But I don't owe anybody a dime," she says.

Several of her children took some inheritance money to buy Fletcher something she wouldn't have afforded otherwise -- Solar Tubes that bring sunlight streaming into several parts of the house.

If she had it to do over again, Fletcher says she would install wood windows instead of vinyl.

But she's looking forward to having a place big enough to have all her family visit, including her five children, 13 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

"I wanted room to put people," she says.

One of the bedrooms with two sunny corner windows will be her studio, where she plans to spin yarn from her annual shearing of her llamas.

Because of her rural agricultural zoning, she also has to demolish her small, 1905-built home next door and plans to recycle everything she can from that house.

Fletcher's goal is to be in her new house this winter. That's going to take a lot of work, and lots more volunteers and elbow grease.

"We've got to get done," she says. "I'd like not to spend another winter in the old house. ... But it's been fun. And it's very satisfying."

Carol Cole-Frowe 366-3538 ccole@normantranscript.com

        

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