REAL ESTATE : Home & Garden Show Highlights House Built With Better Insulation, Lower Costs--and, Yes, Baled Straw

The first little pig may have been on to something.

A house made of straw will be on exhibit during the weeklong annual Southern California Home & Garden Show that began Saturday at the Anaheim Convention Center.

The “Strawbale Eco-Home,” presented by Eos Institute, a nonprofit organization of design professionals and planners, is made of baled straw stacked like bricks to create walls 18 inches to 24 inches thick. The walls are then stuccoed.

Western Metal and Lathe, a Riverside company that makes steel framing systems for commercial and residential buildings, is supplying roof trusses for the building.

Data supplied by the Laguna Beach Eos Institute says that the straw and stucco walls have an insulation factor two to three times the standard in today’s conventionally built homes. Construction costs, according to the institute, can be as little as $18 a square foot. (The national average for standard wood-frame construction is $53 a square foot.)

Some straw houses built in the late 1880s in Nebraska, where it gets nippy in the winters, are still in use.

One new straw home that meets all modern building codes has been built in California in the Inyo County community of Lone Pine. But counties must individually modify their building codes to permit use of the material, and so far most haven’t been asked to, said Lynne Bayless, Eos’ executive director.