Читать книгу More Straw Bale Building - Peter Mack - Страница 75

Straw bale walls are naturally fire resistant.While the dry straw that makes up a bale is easily combustible when loose, the compact nature of a bale does not trap enough air to support combustion. A good analogy can be drawn by comparing the combustibility of a single sheet of newsprint to that of an entire telephone directory. The single sheet will ignite and burn quickly, but if you drop a phone book on your fire, you’ll probably put out the fire. The plaster coating effectively seals the already fire-resistant bales inside a noncombustible casing. A fire would have to burn through the plaster in order to reach the straw. When plaster is combined with the thickness of a bale wall, fire resistance is enhanced. Far from being an issue of concern, the fire testing performed around the world shows the fire-resistant nature of bale walls to be another impressive advantage of the system!