STRAW BALE WALL - A PRACTICE

Hi Folks,

Things are slowly moving forwards, tank in, driveway installed and a practice straw bale wall which will eventually be a centre wall for a shed, cold storage, conservatory, workshop or whatever else we happen to think of at the time, but for now it is a wall.

This was constructed in the following stages:

(1) Construct bottom and top boxing, (protect bales and aid in compression later)

(2) Build up a footing for bottom boxing to sit on: (Gravel and sand) to stop wall from sinking into the soft ground

(3) Lay bottom boxing and fill with crushed rock (19mm screening)

(4) Insert compression strapping under boxing: must be twice length of wall + 1 m

(5) Stack bales

(6) Compress a little

(7) Bang wall into alignment with a wide / flat bale hammer

(8) Recompress and Viola!!, a straw bale wall.

We didn't get around to rendering the wall just yet, we will discuss this in more detail later.