Ever wanted to use hydraulic lime but not been able to find it in your area? Or perhaps you can find it, but it is going to cost you more than the rest of the house combined to ship it to your location. Have hope, there is a way to produce your own hydraulic lime from a much cheaper and more readily available source: quick lime and brick dust.
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Earth plasters are hard to work with. That’s not something that most people expect to hear when talking earth plaster. Most people expect that the natural plaster will be easy to work with and more fun because it is basically just glorified mud. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Earth plaster is an art form and a learned skill rolled into one. With all other plasters, your materials are consistent; however, with earth plaster, the ingredients can change from one square foot of your land to another. You have to fully understand the materials you are working with and how they fit the bigger picture of the overall mix.
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Working with Natural Hydraulic Lime, you’ll want to have a big bottle of White Vinegar on hand. It has a lot of great uses, beyond making volcanoes with baking soda! I keep a gallon of white wine vinegar under my kitchen sink and in my tool trailer.
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When working with straw bale buildings, some people wonder whether mesh is necessary or not. I personally think it offers so many advantages that I don’t consider not using it anymore. So with that bias in front of me, I want to share a really important detail about mesh application.
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Thanks to all of you who came out to the free plastering workshop last weekend. We got a lot accomplished and I’m happy that you all learned a bunch. I was bummed that we never got a chance to take a group photo. Oh well, I guess it was not meant to be. Thanks for traveling as far as you did and from coming from as close as you did (depending on who you are!). We got a lot accomplished, but did not finish the buildings.

I may teach another workshop in the next few weeks using a spray gun to apply the plaster! Stay tuned.

To be continued…….

I can’t believe it, but I have been converted! I never thought I would stand on the side of spraying plaster as I have always believed that hand troweling is better; however, I was convinced of it this last week. After talking with Steven, a master lime plasterer from Scotland, I am fully convinced that spraying is the way to go. As you may know, Scotland is known for having very old buildings, castles like the one above even, that have been plastered and mortared with lime for centuries. The knowledge that Steven shared with us has been passed down for generations and is something I could easily understand through his teaching.
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One of the cool things I learned this last week about lime plaster is the use of “pressing it back.” I had never heard this term, nor had I heard of the concept. It is quite simple and yet creates a very powerful effect on the strength and quality of the plaster.
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For some reason, I did not get the people signing up for the plastering workshop that I had planned. My guess is that most of you plan to hire someone to plaster your house, so why bother taking a class to learn how to do it. I get that, yet I can’t seem to jive that with the number of plastering DVDs I sell. So, the next idea is that the cost of the workshop is too much for you all during these hard times. Well, how does FREE sound?
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Plastering is hard enough, so don’t beat yourself up trying to figure out how much plaster you will need. The first option I HIGHLY recommend is to contact the management at the place from which you intend to order your material and ask them to calculate the order. You can give them your building’s dimensions and other details they request and they will give you a very accurate bag count and sand quantity. In fact, they will most likely be more accurate than you will with the formulas below.
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(photo courtesy of Harvest Build)

Many people have asked me if spraying lime plaster is a good way to go. There are belief structures on either side of the coin. Some people believe that spraying the plaster will improve the adhesion of the plaster to the bales because the plaster is being forced, via compressed air, into the bales. Others believe that hand application provides the best adhesion because the plaster is pushed and shimmied into the bales with arm power. There are other pieces of the puzzle to consider too. How many people do you have available who know how to plaster? How long do you have to get the plaster applied? What is the weather like? Do you have access to a commercial grade plaster spraying machine? Will a small hopper style sprayer work for you?
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There are many details that must be managed in order to produce a quality plaster job. This is true for any type of plaster; however, there are some material specific conditions that must be met when working with Natural Hydraulic Lime (NHL) that are not necessarily common to other materials.
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Bees wax may not be a standard tool in your tool box, but it really should be. If you have ever plastered a house or poured a concrete slab, you know how those materials can dry out your hands. It often goes beyond dry skin and ends up in painful cracked hands. Most people use gloves to try and avoid the affects of the materials, but that never quite works.
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Want to be part of a once a year opportunity? I have several buildings from this year’s straw bale workshops that are in different stages of plastering. This is the perfect way to learn how to plaster with lime because it is necessary to wait a minimum of 10 days in between plaster coats. With my situation, we can do all three coats of plaster on three different buildings over only three days, no need to wait in between coats! Read on for course details.
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For years I used either welded wire mesh or (eeek) chicken wire to shape the space above windows and doors. The chicken wire was horrible, mostly because it never seems to hold a shape, but the welded wire mesh worked pretty well. The biggest problem with the welded wire mesh is that if it is not stuffed well with tightly packed straw or if the straw is packed too tightly, the plaster has a hard time sticking to the lids of the opening.
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There are so many things to consider when choosing a plaster for your straw bale home. I will try and give a quick outline here to get you all started on the path of inquiry. There are many decision to be made and many details to consider in those decisions. The plaster is the thing that most people will notice about your home, so make a wise and well informed decision. Below I will give some pros and cons to Clay, Lime and Cement based plasters. The decision is ultimately yours and I hope the information below will help you decide.
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Photo: R Critchley Plastering

One. All he or she has to do is pick up the phone and call the plastering company!

Okay, that may be an overstatement of how hard it can be to work with a subcontractor when they plaster, but it at least makes my point. Plastering is an art. It is physically exhausting, and long winded. Without the right skills and a large enough crew, you will be setting yourself up for failure and frustration.
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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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At the end of the fifth day of the May Seven Day Intensive Straw Bale Construction Workshop, a few folks mentioned how much they were looking forward to applying the brown coat because it would be so much easier than the scratch coat applied to the interior of the building. I smiled and so “oh yeah?…okay.” By the end of yesterday, their opinion had changed.
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The fifth day of the May workshop started and ended in mud. The good news is that it was mud we were making and using to plaster our beautiful straw bale structure. We are working with lime plaster and as a result, we had a lot of dust masks around.
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Plastering is a difficult process and site conditions have a big impact on the results. Most people are aware that plastering in direct sun is not a great idea, especially with natural plasters. What many don’t realize is that plastering in cold conditions and/or wind can be equally as damaging to the plaster.
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