Straw Bale Building: Window and Door Bucks

Reader Contribution by Dave Larson
Published on May 24, 2011
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Hanging doors and windows in a load-bearing, Nebraska-style straw bale building can be a challenge.  There’s just no way I that know to keep a two-foot wide straw bale wall from settling and no two bales are going to settle the same amount. To avoid jammed doors or cracked windows caused by shifting bucks, we built bucks with frames that extended from stem wall to bond beam.

Our bucks were built to do double duty. They were constructed to provide a secure and square opening for windows and doors as well as ensuring a strong mechanical connection between the stem wall and the bond beam, serving to tie our wall together. In this way, not only were our windows well secured, but our entire structure was strengthened.

We adapted this building strategy after looking at the work of a few straw bale builders here in Arizona and New Mexico and reading about the work of others.

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