In my humble opinion, trying to cover a mobile home with strawbales to build a permanent structure would be a major pain in the butt.
You could build much faster, with less hassles, and end up with a much higher quality home building with strawbales directly. Maybe you can make use of the mobile home by living in it during construction?
Papercrete sprayed over strawbales has been done several times with excellent results. It adds more insulation, but it also speeds the plastering/stucco process dramatically. It is much easier to fill the gaps and can easily be smoothed out with a trowel if you want that type of look. If you have access to inexpensive strawbales, that can be a great way to build.
Check out Bob Merrill's photos in this group's photo section. He was one of the (if not the original) pioneers of combining papercrete with strawbale in this manner.
Believe it or not, with some frugal scrounging and careful selecting of fixtures, I think it may actually end up cheaper to build a strawbale/papercrete structure from scratch and end up with a much better structure, than to try to wrap a mobile home in bales, but I don't have the hard data to prove that. It would depend heavily on your ability to acquire used and/or inexpensive materials.
Of course... that's only my opinion. I've never attempted to convert a mobile home in this manner, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. It wouldn't be the first time.
There were a couple of women in West Virginia that wrapped a mobile home with papercrete a few years ago and posted parts of their story to this group. They called themselves "Grannies".
Here is a link to a search of the papercreters archives for "grannies"
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/papercreters/msearch?query=grannies&charset=windows-1252
And since the Yahoo system is notorious for screwing up links...
Here is the same link in a TinyURL format that should be clickable if Yahoo screws up the above link.
http://tinyurl.com/SearchForGrannies
You will find many references to their efforts to convert a mobile home.
Perhaps you may find some useful information there.
Brian, rad_dad_2 wrote:------------
I don't have any structure in mind, I am thinking built from scratch. I thought covering a mobile home with strawbale would be a good idea, papercrete would also seem viable. I was wondering about the snow banks which can cover a house, and spring thaws, as well as the cold temps.
Brian
------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/papercreters/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/papercreters/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
papercreters-digest@yahoogroups.com
papercreters-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
papercreters-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
