This morning before the driveway fiasco I visited Lars (he owner built a straw bale house on the island recently and has been a great mentor) and he has just lent me a whole batch of straw bale building tools and equipment which we will use next weekend when we build a practice straw bale wall on the property.
This wall will be about 6m long by about 6ft high and will probably be a future wall for a shed, but for now it will serve well as a north facing thermal mass wall that will provide a great micro climate for growing things. This practise wall will be a project that will enable us to test out our straw bale wall raising and clay rendering skills before we have to put these skills to use for real on the house. We will stack and compress this wall as we would a house wall and it will be a great way to become comfortable with building with straw.
For this project we will require pine timber for the bottom and top plates, a length of compression strapping (this is specifically designed to take the strain in compression), crushed rock and sand for the base and bottom plate, 30 bales, a load of clay, sand and lime, a concrete mixer, bale twine, baling tools, and a assortment of tools.
Lars will be available to provide a helping hand and we will try and rope in a few mates to help us particularly with the rendering even on a small job this can be a difficult job.
I will write a future blog detailing the tools and costing for this job.
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One of the things I love about straw bale is how individual each project becomes. I am participating in a 6-day workshop on a straw bale project and posting about it.
ReplyDeleteTools really make a difference, and each person who straw bales regularly seems to have developed some special ones of their own.
check it out.
http://digginginthedriftless.wordpress.com/2010/08/03/straw-bale-bending-walls/
I'll be posting more about tools and the process of stitching the bales together within a chicken wire frame this Friday.
straw bale forever,
Denise