Walls in Container

Our house is making progress: the architectural committee of the HOA has accepted the design, Kanab has granted us a building permit, and the walls are in the container.

You read that right. We’re using load-bearing straw panels by EcoCocon: the compressed straw and load-bearing wood frames provide excellent insulation with no thermal bridges. The 100 panels are custom made for our house:

Panels seen from southwest

The panels are 40 cm (15"3/4) thick, providing an R value of 39. The wall to the garage is ‘only’ 30 cm (11"13/16) thick, for an R value of 30. The panels are created with millimeter precision – at most 2 millimeters off over a 3 meter wall. You can find some perspectives on building with the panels in this Scan Magazine article, and all the details on EcoCocon’s website.

The wall panels were manufactured in Lithuania a week ago (a second factory is being built in Slovakia). Then they were loaded into a container, along with a few supplies that were easier to get in Europe.

Container being loaded

Container fully loaded

Apparently, it was quite a Tetris project to get all the panels into a single container.

Panels as loaded int container

The container is supposed to arrive in the Port of Los Angeles on May 29, and then in Kanab on May 30. Fingers crossed for smooth sailing.