Exterior Finishes

For a variety of reasons, natural hydraulic lime and straw bales make a perfect couple. First of all, using a few of coats of natural hydraulic lime plaster on top of earthen plaster is a brilliant and easy way to give your straw bale home a "finished" look. It's also a way to add color to the exterior of your home without using traditional paint, which can be full of unhealthy VOCs. Like earthen plasters, natural hydraulic lime is highly breathable, meaning condensation is able to move freely out of the straw bales—a huge benefit that greatly reduces the potential for mold growth. Natural hydraulic lime is also about 2 to 3 times more elastic than concrete, which is incredibly important when it comes to straw bale walls, because they like to settle.

But, don't be fooled: You don't have to build a straw bale home to reap the awesome green benefits of natural hydraulic lime plaster. No, this stuff is a fabulous exterior finish choice for a number of wall types, not just straw.

Natural hydraulic lime can be used in renovation as well as new building; it can and has been used on wooden lath, metal lath, straw bales, adobe and cob, and masonry.

The exterior of your home needs a new coat of paint. You know it, but you've been putting it off for a number of reasons. A) It's expensive. B) You've heard that traditional exterior paint is high in VOCs, which is not good. And C) You've also heard that the more environmentally-friendly, zero-VOC paints come in only a limited spectrum of colors. And, well, you've grown quite fond of that pea-green you picked back in 1974.

That's fine! It's true: Traditional paints are high in VOCs, which are bad for your health and the health of anyone you might hire to paint your house. And it's true that it can be quite expensive; however, the stuff about limited colors? Not true.

Most retailers who stock zero-VOC paints are now offering matching systems, and guaranteeing that they'll be able to match the colors offered by most major paint brands. Take, for instance, EcoHome Improvement in Berkeley, Ca. They promise a "state-of-the-art color matching system, allowing you to choose from virtually thousands of colors."

Exciting stuff!

Eco Safety Products offers the same service.

And, if you can, make sure your paint is also Green Seal approved.

You're not quite ready to start from scratch and build a straw bale home, but you have been giving some serious thought to the exterior of your house. The paint is chipping, or worse, the wood is rotting.

The neighbors have been tsk-tsking for awhile now. It's time to invest some money and do something that is sustainable, environmentally-responsible and beautiful. So what are your green siding options? There are a number, each with their own unique set of pros and cons: