Tracie Beardsley meets sustainable builder Phil Christopher, championing a straw home revolution and defying the big bad wolf
All images: Huff and Puff Construction Ltd
It would have been a very different ending to the classic fairy story of the three little pigs building their houses of straw, sticks and bricks if Phil Christopher had lent a hand.
Phil is founder of the brilliantly named Huff and Puff Construction, specialising in sustainable straw buildings that could easily withstand the lung capacity of any big bad wolf hoping to ‘blow your house down’.
Challenging common misconceptions about straw houses, Phil is proving they’re strong, well-insulated and environmentally responsible. Straw buildings last for hundreds of years, are warmer in winter, cooler in summer and more fire retardant than many modern builds.
According to Phil, they’re also ‘inherently simple’ to build ‘without breaking the bank’. He manufactures the Huff Puff House, a straw bale building kit to the self-build market. ‘People can achieve their self-build dream with our eco-friendly and energy-efficient houses. We can help with design, planning, building control, training and construction if needed.’
Phil’s journey from software development to natural building is inspiring. Talking to me wearing his trademark company t-shirt – sporting those three porky pigs – he explains how he took the step from full time employment in IT project management at Bournemouth University to launching Huff and Puff Construction in 2013: ‘Construction project management isn’t actually so very different,’ he says. A keen handyman, he spent 18 months learning everything he could, from dry stone walling to electrics, hurdle making to sustainable building techniques.
‘It’s always been my ambition to do something to help the environment, not make it worse,’ he says. ’It stems from a desire to live lightly and promote materials that work with nature rather than against it. I’ve always been into natural history and as a young boy I became increasingly concerned about human impact.’
His ‘micro company’ – it’s just him and a freelance architect – operates out of his hometown of Wareham. There are no lmits on straw buildings – they are as flexible as any build: ‘you could create a straw build skyscraper if you wanted to,’ says Phil. ‘The construction’s not actually all that different from normal housebuilding: there are several ways to build with straw bales. They can be used for load bearing structures, infill for timber framed buildings, structural insulated panels (SIPs), retrofitted to existing structures, or combined with other methods.’
The self-build sector is less than ten per cent of the massive house building market in the UK, and Phil’s straw bale building kit is a tiny fraction of that percentage. Yet the Huff and Puff portfolio boasts notable projects: just one year in, Phil was commissioned to build an art cabin roundhouse for Sherborne’s Youth and Community Centre. ‘At times I thought I’d bitten off more than I could chew, but I sought advice from the best in the business with incredible results,’ says Phil. ‘It was great working with young people in Sherborne to create artistic works for the building.’
Hastings Country Park Visitor Centre followed – the flagship straw-bale build was part of a European initiative ‘Up Straw’ to encourage more straw-built public buildings.
Closer to home, Phil’s built an impressive barn in Motcombe, an idyllic straw house in Milton Abbas and plenty of garden rooms and cabins. All of them encompass the German Passivhaus construction approach, focusing on reducing energy consumption and carbon footprint. Self build costs for a straw bale house are broadly comparable to a similar-quality new house, but Phil points out that the payback from a Passivhaus is swift, with heating bills of perhaps £100 a year.
‘Plus, straw is accessible as a material – many self-builders save on contractor costs just by doing more themselves,’
Phil is hands-on in the business, constructing buildings alongside an array of skilled tradespeople from across the country. ‘With a decade of projects from Dorset to Scotland, I’ve amassed a UK-wide little black book of construction and craftspeople.’
Phil believes personal ownership and real community engagement are the building blocks missing from modern-day. The real life big bad wolf for him is the huge building company, swooping in, building thousands of sub-standard houses with multiple snagging issues and then disappearing without facing any consequences:
‘It’s not just the cost to the environment: it’s the cost to the community,’ he says. ‘These big builders don’t use local tradesmen. They don’t engage existing residents. The crisis is shocking. Skilled tradespeople contracted to big building companies are forced to do sub-standard work in a bullying culture. I’ve run self-help courses – there’s a worrying rise in mental health issues in the construction industry.
‘Modern cement is an ongoing disaster. Globally, cement production accounts for five to ten per cent of manmade CO2 emissions. We use lime render for external surfaces, and internally a clay plaster – the rest is just wood and straw. In the UK, we have so much surplus straw we could build at least half a million houses annually. And, like trees, straw captures carbon as it grows. However, unlike trees, straw grows every year! Lock that straw up in a building for 200 plus years and it’s a massive contribution to carbon capture, without any complicated technology.’
Book by Phil’s bedside?
Patrick O Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series – 21 sea novels set during the Napoleonic wars, many set locally. Great escapism.
A-list dinner party guests?
Thomas Hardy – I’m fascinated with him as a human being. And poet William Barnes: he knew Hardy and I’d love to understand what they spoke about.
Author Mary Shelley, the founder of science fiction of which I am a big fan.
Eddie Izzard. I’m doing a masters in comedy writing so would love to pick his brains. I want to write a sitcom about Wareham in the Viking days!
