In lieu of an intro blurb, we'll just leave this here... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olo923T2HQ4 Straw bale sound insulation: Blowing away the chaff. "Popular opinion states that straw bale walls are good at isolating sound. Cheap load bearing straw bale houses could contribute substantially to low carbon sustainable construction. However, literature on the subject was found to be highly anecdotal. The paper presents a summary of nine laboratory and field sound insulation test reports and two especially commissioned tests. Data were compared to European party wall sound insulation criteria, and it was found that straw walls could perform as well as, but sometimes worse than, conventional constructions, due to poor performance at low frequencies. Better performance could help to promote the use of straw bales in multi-unit housing. It was found that by adding a plasterboard layer on studs to just one side of a plastered straw bale wall would allow the construction to pass all of the criteria reviewed."
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