Andrew,
We are about to start plastering a straw bale house in central NH. The work so far has been done old fashioned barn raising/volunteerism style. Do you know anybody that may want to lend a hand anytime after Aug. 21? Please check out the project at the following link: www.alexiseynonuppermadriverrdproject.shutterfly.com.

Thanks
Errol

bestwalls4u@eagle1st.com

1. Long straw. Be sure to ask your source is the bales are long straw or chopped/thrashed straw. A bale harvested by a combine will be thrashed straw and the short pieces make for a very weak bale. These are a poor choice for building. A long straw bale will typically be 14″ tall (2-string) and 16″ tall (3 string).

2. Look for a cut edge and a folded edge. If the cut edge is not clearly visible on one SIDE of the bale, it is probably a thrashed bale and the “cut edge” is likely facing up or down. Again, don’t buy these bales.

3. Color. You want a bright, golden color. Brown or black bales have seen moisture damage. Dull bales may have been stored for a season or longer. They can be acceptable if the other details check out; however, fresh bales are best if you can find them.

4. Moisture Content. Bales should be around 8-13% moisture content when checked with a bale probe. Under no circumstances should the bales reach higher than 20%. At that level, mold growth is supported.

5.Density. The easiest test is to pick up a bale by one string. If the bale deforms in any way, then don’t buy the bales. If the bale stays completely in shape, then the density is acceptable.

6. Shape. tight, rectangular bales are what you want. check the corners of the bales to make sure they are not rounded. Rounded corners will mean a lot of stuffing after the wall is stacked. Tight, angular corners mean the bales will fit together well and your stuffing will be limited.

7. Smell. This is another test of moisture. When you walk into the barn, take a deep inhalation through your nose. How does the room smell? Musty is not a good sign. Fresh straw is what you want to smell.

8. Weight. Dry bales will be relatively light weight. A 2-string bale should not wiehg more than say 45lbs. If it’s heavy (you’ll know what heavy means when you feel it) the bale is probably wet.

Most importantly, use your common sense. If something seems off, it probably is. The importance of quality bales can’t be stressed enough. If you get bad bales, you will fight them from the moment they arrive on site to the moment you finish the house. They make for more retying, more stuffing, more material loss, more post stacking compression, less effectiveness of wall clean up (string trimmer work), weaker vertical stands and corners, more tamping to get your walls plumb, weaker plaster substrate and more. Trust me, get quality bales.

Happy (quality) baling!

A large group of people from across the globe gathered outside Grants, NM to help build the home of Kent and Gillian. What started out as  series of vehicles stuck in the mud (cars, trucks, and RVs) turned out to be a great week. Apparently, this part of New Mexico received just shy of their annual rainfall in the month of July alone, so things were wet and muddy. The road on which the property is located is called “Bad Road,” literally. It lived up to its name by claiming several vehicles on the way in. Luckily Seth, the builder of the home, was as skilled with a toe rope as he is with a hammer and saw!

The participants worked really hard to get the home completed and we created a truly beautiful baling job in the process. The interior has exposed natural wood beam lintels above most of the windows and doors which are a fine reflection of the rustic New Mexico landscape. The soft curves of the bale walls play wonderfully into the lines of the lintels as well. As hard as they worked, we all still had time to relax, play and hang out. The weather opened up for us and we had a week of glorious weather with one dramatic rain storm mid week. We all had a wonderful time playing music and telling stories around the campfire. The shooting stars and coyotes rounded out the perfection of the location. As always, great friends were made, and much was learned by both the participants and me. Each week is a new adventure and a new gathering of great people.

]]> http://www.strawbale.com/new-mexico-workshop/feed 0 http://www.strawbale.com/chainsaw-safety http://www.strawbale.com/chainsaw-safety#comments Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:35:47 +0000 Andrew Morrison http://www.strawbale.com/?p=1931 Chainsaws are an active part of straw bale construction. There are some other options for cutting bales, of course, but a quality electric or gas powered chainsaw is still my favorite. It’s really important that safety be considered when working with any tool and a chainsaw is no different. There are times when a small section of bale needs to be cut off and the temptation to have someone hold the bale while you cut is great. Without that person holding the bale, it’s unstable and tends to shift as the cut is peformed. Thisd makes for a messy cut and a dangerous situation for the saw operator.

You can see in the picture what I recommend. By using a piece of wood long enough to get the bale holder away from the saw and the “kick area” of the saw, he is able to provide adequate support for the bale and allow the chainsaw operator to work without added risk. The “kick area,” by the way, is the apace which the saw would cover if it bound up and kicked back. Kick back happens so fast that there is no way a person could move out of the path, especially if they are not the ones in control of the saw as they would have no indication that the saw was about to kick until it was too late.

Again, the simple use of a piece of wood makes this situation safe. Notice also that both men are wearing safety glasses. No, it’s not sawing hard wood, but yes, stuff can still hurt your eyes.

Here are some basic safety guidelines to keep in mind when working with chainsaws. This is only a partial list, so take whatever precautions you need to stay safe.

1. Work on a stable table. I like to use another bale or even better, two bales run perpendicular to the bale I’m cutting.

2. Keep your body out of the kick area.

3. Wear safety glasses and hearing protection.

4. Work in a well ventilated and light area. You need to see what you;re doing and breathing gas fumes all day won’t make your day any better!

5. Clearly mark your cut in advance and follow the line.

6. Watch for bale twine!

7. Be sure your helper is safe (see above).

8. Clean the sprocket and guard area often to keep it clear of straw. Jammed straw can throw a chain or catch fire.

9. Keep the saw well maintained. Oil and properly adjust the chain.

10. Always unplug electric saws and turn off gas saws before performing any maintenance or adjustments.

1. Start with good quality bales. I can’t say that enough. It will get more and more obvious the further into your job you go.
2. Notch your bales tight to the posts without being too tight. Trying to get too tight will leave you with bales that don’t fully fit around the posts due to folded straw.
3. Be sure that your retied bales are tight. Use the miller’s knot to make sure your bales are as tight as can be.
4. Stack in running bond whenever possible.
5. Intertie corners of adjacent walls.
6. Keep full bales in the corners and keep small, filler pieces away from the corner.
7. Make sure your walls are plumb.
8. Calculate your wall heights during framing to match your bale heights. There is an important detail here I’ll discuss later.
9. Frame a backer board to bale to at the top of the wall.
10. Use welded wire mesh to resist out-of-plane and in-plane loads.

Okay, so let’s focus on number 8 from the list above. The rest are equally as important, but this is what we’re going to discus today. When you calculate your wall heights for framing, be sure to take into account a level of bale compression. For quality bales (which of course you have due to item number 1 in the list) I typically subtract 1-2″ from thew over all wall height. It looks like this:

Add 3 1/2″ toe up plus 7 courses of bales at 14″ tall each minus 2″ for compression. That gives you your height for the top of your wall/bottom of your floor above (or rafters). As number 9 states, then frame in a backer board on the bottom of the floor joists or rafters to press your bales against. This is typically a piece of 1/2″ plywood nailed to the joists with a 2×4 nailer on the face of the bale plane to attach our mesh to. Overall, we’re left with 2 1/2″ of compression to make our last bale course fit.

That may not sound like a lot; however, with quality bales, there is not a lot of room in a wall to compress the bales. This means getting the bales to actually fit into the wall is a challenge. There are some hi-tech ways to make it work: using a car jack or two for example; however, the fastest and easiest way is to use a small sheet of Masonite. This roughly 1/4″ thick hard board is very slippery and allows the bales to slide easily into position. Simply place a piece on top of your second to last course, wedge the final bale into place, and then kick the pants off of it! It helps to leave out the second to last course bales in front of your path and then infill as you build. In other words, bale the last two courses together, don’t try and do the final course after the second to last course is already complete.

There’s nothing like the strength of your legs to get this job done. Trying to bash the bales into place with a tamper is not easy. Use your big muscles or the big muscles of a friend to accomplish this task! In a pinch, if you don’t have access to Masonite, you can use 30 pound roofing felt. It provides adequate slip; however, you can’t pull it out easily once the bale is installed and so it stays in the wall. This makes for a slippery top course and although does not defeat the purpose, it certainly makes keeping the top bale in place harder. In case that’s not clear…do NOT leave the Masonite in place once the bale has been set. Pull it out and use the same piece for the next bale.

I spoke with the sand yard directly and told them what I needed. The dispatcher seemed to understand completely and the next day, 10 yards of angular, variable size sand was delivered to our very remote building site. There was no sending it back if we didn’t like it, it was what it was and it turned out to be the wrong stuff. The issue was that it had no fines in it.

The right sand for the Natural Hydraulic Lime (NHL) plaster needs a gradation of sand from the fines to the more coarse. No silts and clays mind you, but the finer end of the gradation is important.

You can see in the picture how the plaster simply did not hold together well. The lack of finer sand made the plaster loose and almost gravelly. I did a stretch test on the plaster by pulling a hawk’s worth of plaster across the table with a trowel. In quality plaster, the mud will spread and stay together, creating a smooth surface. In this case, however, the plaster ripped and tore as I pulled it on the mud board. There was nothing to hold it together.

We tried for an hour or so to get the mud to stick to the wall and eventually the sad truth became all too apparent: the plaster was not good. The worst part of the story is that we had premixed 18 bags of plaster the night before and all of it was wasted! The host now has a very fancy NHL carport floor! I ordered 18 replacement bags for the host and have informed him of the correct sand he’ll need, moving forward.

When you order your sand, be sure it meets the requirements on the NHL bag. Where I live the perfect sand is called “concrete sand.” It is angular, has many different grits (including the finer sands), and is perfect for the proper adhesion of the plaster. The same has been true across the country as I teach. The term “concrete sand” is almost always understood. In this part of New Mexico, that was not true. My plan moving forward is to send future workshop hosts a sample of the sand they should be looking for so they can make sure, well in advance, that they have the right stuff.

Check out this artist’s 5-year-old home on 2.4 usable, fenced acres in the foothills east

Currently, as of July 28 2010, priced at $550K.

Please leave a comment here if you’re interested in this amazing home and check out some of the photos here as well.

Here’s the email and the link to vote:

Pepsi is hosting a Refresh Everything contest in which my husband and I entered. Our submission? A request to help us get to your Ottawa workshop and build our own straw bale house in New Brunswick.

In turn this will raise awareness to our fellow Canadians as well we plan to donate any remaining money to the local Habitat for Humanity. We hope to train, video tape, document, etc so that Habitat for Humanity can begin building more homes with straw instead of wood.

We’d love to have your support as well as the support of your followers.

The site to cast your vote is: http://www.refresheverything.ca/strawbalebuilding
Thanks for your support!

Kelly will be joining us in California this September and I don’t yet know which workshop Penelope will choose. I have three more dates available right now.

Grants, New Mexico in August

Ottawa, Ontario in September

Junction City, California in September

Hope you can join us too!

What was really helpful was having a vast array of professionals in the group. We had an electrician, a plasterer, a mechanic, and a landscape contractor all on site. Of course we also had folks whose work was outside the job specific arena, and they were super valuable too, but having professionals in the trade, on site, with their tools was super helpful.

We had some crazy weather a couple times during the week, but in general, it was perfect. I’ll tell you one thing for sure, Tennessee rain showers are nothing like Southern Oregon rain showers. Up here, they’re a gentle mist and steady slow falling of rain. Down there, it came down at a 45 degree angle with huge winds and massive thunder and lightening. The locals called it a shower. I was gripping onto the building fearing I might blow away!

We had an amazing helper in the form of a 5 year old boy. He was great at so many tasks on the site from clean up to stuffing to helping with sewing the walls. He also helped make the week fun with his energy and desire to play ball and catch toads and crickets. It was great having him around. We also had a 2 year old birthday party and a guy willing to eat bugs on demand. That’s a long story…! 

In the end, we created a great building and managed to get a lot accomplished. Thanks everyone for a great week and I hope you all stay in touch and share your projects as they come to fruition. If you’re interested in joining me for a workshop this year, you have three options to choose from. New Mexico (coming up fast), Ontario (almost full) and California (still room and time for this one!). I hope to see you there. Click here to sign up.