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I received the following blog post on my old blog (that blog is no longer active so i can’t respond there). It started me thinking about rice straw and humid climates and I noticed that many of the humid climates are actually where rice grows and thrives. To that end, I wondered if it might really be possible to build with bales in a humid climate if the bales were rice straw. I am not in a position to undertake this study, but want to present a challenge to you all:
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There is a new website out there that helps people find straw bales all over the united States. They can deliver as well and have a price break for those buying in bulk. The website is very well designed and I hope will prove to be a great asset to us bale builders and home owners looking to build with bales.
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For years now I have been using a weedwhacker to smooth the walls of every straw bale house I have built. But no more! From now on, I plan to use this cool invention created at my last workshop here in Jacksonville.
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Landscape pins are something I don’t use a lot of; however, they can be a good friend when you need to stick the mesh or blood lath to a bale and sewing is not an option. One problem with landscape pins is they tend to fall out of the wall as fast as you stick them in. So, how to keep them put?
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When building a straw bale house, the bales are likely delivered to the site in squeeze blocks: tall 8′ x 8′ blocks of straw bales. Here’s a simple solution for getting the bales from the top of the delivered pile to the ground where you can handle them. In most cases, people climb their way to the top of the pile and then throw the bales off to the ground. This will usually damage at least some of the bales and is a good way to squish one or more of your generous helpers! There is a better way.
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One situation you are likely to find yourself in when building a straw bale house is the ends of bales sticking too far into a room or beyond the plumb line of an exterior wall. As you know, when you build a bale house, you interlock the corners by placing one bale East-West and then the next bale course North-South as you turn the corner. In doing so, it is easy to stack one of those bales out of plumb and not notice it until the whole wall is stacked. Another place this is common is around window and door openings. I have seen many folks terminate the bales too far into the window opening to create the shape they want when meshing and shaping. Those bales need to be cut back to allow for proper shaping.
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Example of an old stone buttress wall
When building a load bearing straw bale wall, you need to support the wall from falling over into the house or out of the house. The direction in concern is called the out of plane direction and is perpendicular to the wall. A wall should be supported in a ratio of 13:1 (length to thickness of wall). For a standard 3 string bale, this is every 25′. The question often arises about how to support a wall where an intersecting wall is not desired, such as in a living room or kitchen.
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I partly wrote this post just so I could use this picture, I admit it. Cool picture though huh?

I often talk about knowing where your bales will come from before you start building and even designing so you can know the dimensions and how those dimensions will affect your process. I cannot say how important this is, now more than ever. The number of available bales in the Northwest is so small right now, that I am struggling to find enough for my June workshop! I have contacted all of my sources and have managed to find some bales, only to run into the dilemmaFr1skyandS of how to get them here. Fuel costs being as high as they are, it is hard to cost effectively transport bales any distance.
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For a long time my crew has used the same mesh (2″x2″ 14 gauge welded wire mesh) to shape windows and door openings. It has always worked very well; however, I have recently found a situation in which that can be quite problematic for the plastering process.
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Perhaps the greatest tool on a straw bale construction jobsite is the bales themselves. Of course, I LOVE the straw bale needles I use, but there is nothing quite as amazing as the many uses of straw bales on a site.
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All too often the conversation about how to protect bales in a straw bale wall is held without any mention of how to protect those bales prior to their installation. So, how do you protect the bales once they arrive on site and before you install them? For some reason, most likely Murphy’s Law, it will rain once the bales have been delivered, even if you are building in the middle of the desert! I consider a fresh stack of dry bales to be a rain magnet.
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I recently heard that some, if not all, straw and hay out of the Pacific Northwest has a mold spore in it. The question that accompanied this information is how to counter act the affects of the mold on the bales so they can be used for constriction.
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I get a lot of questions about how tall a bale building can be. People want to know if they can build three story homes with straw bales or if they are limited to one story. That all depends on the way you chose to build: load bearing or in-fill.
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I would love to hear from people who may have experience working with government agencies to approve straw bale on government projects. In other words, building federal buildings out of bales. I know there are police stations, visitor centers, and more already built with bales. If you had any experience with these buildings, please help out Diane to achieve her goal. Thanks. More information about the goal is below along with my response to Diane.
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When making window and door bucks for your load bearing home or other structure, you have a few choices to make. What size wood do you want to use? What design should you employ? How will you attach the bucks to the wall?
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Retying bales is one of the most important techniques on a straw bale construction job site. You will be required to retie many bales over the course of the construction and each retying episode will take time. It is not a fast process to retie bales so every step that can be done more efficiently will impact the overall timeline of the job. In the following video, the first in a series of two, I teach you how to make two bales out of one bale with speed and accuracy. I also talk about spreading the bales and other details that will save you time and energy.
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Weather cycles in many parts of the country are affecting the number of available straw bales. For example, drought in the Southeast has had a significant impact on the grain markets. As a result, more farmers are baling hay than producing grain crops. This means there is simply less straw available to builders and other end users and the price of those bales is higher than last year. A more global impact on straw bale availability and price is seen in the agricultural commodities markets. Prices for grain is rising in most countries and as a result, governments are actually buying less for international aid and long term stock pile reserves. This means that although the value of the grain is higher, finding a buyer may be more difficult. Partnered with this trend is the growing demand for corn based fuels like ethanol.
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Here are some questions I got from a client yesterday. I think they are worth sharing.

Q1. How much force is required to tie the bales tight. (my elbows are killing me)

A: The knot that I use, the Miller’s Knot (although I have been told that the name might be incorrect) is so strong that it is possible to tie the bales tighter than the original baling machine. This requires a strong twine as well as the standard twine often snaps under the added pressure of this knot. Super blue twine works very well. In general, I try to tie the bales as tight as I can. This usually means that when I am done, the old knots are slightly loose and the new twine is very tight to the bales. In terms of foot-pounds, I have no idea. IN terms of elbow pain, I would suggest a little less than what causes pain!

Q2. How to handle situations where you are only 3 to 4″ short and too small for a bale. How to stuff, how to lock the bales from moving and the use of tar paper under the bales and strapping.
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It is important that all wood surfaces be covered with roofing felt to separate them from the plaster. If you do not do this, the plaster will adhere to the wood and will be prone to extensive cracking as the wood dries and moves over time. a typical house has a lot of wood members that will need to be isolated so the process can be time consuming. It can also go quickly with a little planning and forethought. Here’s what I suggest. Figure out the major widths of the wood components that need to be covered with the felt. Add 4″ to that width for some overlap (I’ll tell you why in a minute). Now the roofing felt to the chop saw (use an old blade because the felt will gum it up terribly!)and cut the roll into smaller rolls matching the width you determined. Cut slowly to stop the felt from melting to itself rendering it useless. Now you have precut rolls of the size you need to move quickly through the structure. These rolls are not only cut to size, but also easier to carry around the job site and up ladders if necessary.

Now, why did you add 4″ to the measurement of the wood members? When notching your bales, I always tell you to over cut the notch rather than under cut it. If you try and hit the notch size exactly, you will miss most of the time and the trimming of the notch in the bale is hard to accomplish well. This means the bales will be harder to get into place and the time you’ll spend trimming, fine tuning and installing your bales will be huge. If you over cut the notches, you will speed the process immensely; however, you may end up with a bunch of 1″ gaps on the outside of the structure against the posts and beams where the over cut took place. You could stuff these, but it is hard (because they are only a few inches deep) and very time consuming (now you’re back to where you started with lost time!). The extra roofing felt (4″ over cut) acts as backing for the plaster as long as there is no more than an inch or so of space behind the felt. The other 1-3 inches of felt laps onto the bale, bridging the gap. There is no significant affect on the R-Value of the wall and the process is sped up greatly. Again, the faster you can move through the baling process, the sooner you can get the bales protected with plaster.

When adding a straw bale addition to an existing straw bale house, you have to be sure to create a connection between the two walls (old and new). One way to do this is with dowels or rebar embedded into the old wall and laid in place in between courses of new wall. This allows you to leave the existing plaster in place and still accomplish a connection. Another way is remove the plaster from the existing wall and then use plaster lath on the top of each new course that is bent at 90 degrees and pined to the old wall surface. Use landscape pins on the old and new walls to attach the plaster lath. You will want to offset the new walls in either application so they are not in line with each other. In other words, add a right angle turn from the old wall and offset the new wall by at least one foot. This will help when you plaster because it gives you a stopping point (the corner). Without it, you will see a large plaster scar or will be required to plaster the entire wall (both old and new) to a corner.