Friday, November 16th, 2007 | Popularity: 84%
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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.
Obviously a quality baling needle is needed for retying bales. You can get the design for our needles at www.straw-bale-tools.com which you can then take to a local metal worker. Our needle design is the best and most efficient needle I have ever used and is well worth the time to build. In fact, I suggest you build at least two and perhaps even four needles before you start building. The needle design package at the above website includes an e-book on how to most efficiently use the needle, a scaled shop drawing for the metal shop, and a separate video on how to use the needles on everything from sewing and retying bales to cooking rotisserie style! Everything you need to know about baling needles is in that package.
Although the above video offers a lot of information about retying bales, the more you practice, the better you will get. Be patient with yourself as you get started, especially with the miller’s knot. Most balers are used to using a trucker’s hitch knot which is an adequate knot, but not nearly as fast or strong as the miller’s knot. If you are used to tying a trucker’s hitch, it may take you some time to learn the new knot. Stick with it and you will be thrilled in the end. Next week I will post the second half of this video which shows you step by step and up close how to tie a miller’s knot. This single technique will save you hours on the job and a lot of headaches during construction. Happy Baling.
Popularity: 84%
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Andrew Morison is a licensed contractor specializing in straw bale and green construction. He has shown thousands of people how to build their own straw bale projects through his comprehensive series of instructional straw bale, concrete foundation, and plastering DVDs. You can check these out at http://www.LearnStrawBale.com.
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November 19th, 2007 at 5:07 am
Ladies and gentlemen
Chile and I live in my house built on the basis of the system construcccion with bales of wheat straw. The truth is that I am quite happy with the outcome of the case, both in the economy of the construction as well as the livability and comfort to live in it. With great effort I managed that, look, stay with angles and edges of walls completely upright, creating a layer of mud prior to wheat straw, which greatly diminished the cost of cement mortar lining and walls.
My idea is to be able to communicate with you, in other latitudes, and to know the behavior of their houses in their countries and generate potential business between us. Chile we have here in woods that we are recycling old houses in demolition, wood oak and pine fir for example applications and carved splendid.
I hope your answer, thank you
November 19th, 2007 at 5:41 am
I live in a wire world. The twine will work well for retying and I can use original wire for tying the leftover. Is there a downside to wire bales? I doubt I have any options but it’s good to know any shortfalls before they show up on their own.
November 19th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Thanks Lio for writing and I am glad to hear your project turned out well. Please continue to use this blog as a way to connect with other people interested in straw bale construction. I hope it proves to be a good way to make connections for you.
Andrew
November 19th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Cor,
Wire is a bit of a pain. It is hard to work with, but as long as you only use it for whole bales and the wire is close enough to the center of the bale that it does hno interfere with your notching process, it should be fine. Do not use it for re tying bales. Be sure to use twine instead on both halves of the bale. If you try to use the wire to retie a section, new or original, you will find it very hard to get the bales as tight as the section tied with the twine in a miller’s knot.
Andrew
November 21st, 2007 at 9:47 am
All the farmers I know use wire to bale their straw.
I have read that some straw balers are concerned that repeated annual condensation on the bale wire in heating climates may cause future moisture problem where the wire makes contact with the straw.
I may have to look outside my local county to find a baler that has equipment that bales with twine.
Thank you for the re-tying bale video!
November 22nd, 2007 at 3:45 am
Actualmente estoy construyendo mi casa en gradúa, barro,fique,y cal estabilizada, con cubierta en teja de barro, no soy arquitecta ni ingeniera, y por las malas experiencias vividas con los arquitectos en la región me he visto obligada a construir mi casa, con el apoyo de la información obtenida a través de la web, hoy le he conocido y me siento feliz pues he aprendido y confirmado mucho, gracias por su valiosa contribución, soy perfectamente bilingüe, aunque para escribir prefiero el español, menos riesgos de error.
November 22nd, 2007 at 6:52 am
Here’s the above message in English:
At present I am building my house in graduates, clay, fique, and lime stabilized, with cover in tile of clay, I am not an architect neither engineer, and by the bad experiences lived with the architects in the region I have seen me obliged to build my house, with the support of the information obtained through the web, today I have known him and I feel happy therefore I have learned and confirmed a lot, thanks by Contribution, I am perfectly bilingual, although to write I prefer Spanish, less risks of error.
November 22nd, 2007 at 12:11 pm
Hey, Andrew - This is Mike and Leslie in Ruch. Just bought you a Stout thru the paypal to say, Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours! You do a wonderful thing providing all this infomation, and you do it well.
November 22nd, 2007 at 3:26 pm
Thanks guys! I appreciate your kindness. Happy Thanksgiving to you too.
(I forwarded the technical website “broken links” info to the webmaster. Thanks again.)
January 3rd, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Hi Andrew!- this is Eshita from India. Im a writer with an online service and currently im working on an article on Strawbale structures-the alternate face of home-making. I came across your website and i find it to be extremely informative for beginners like me. I was wondering if you could help me out with some basic information on strawbale structures for my article.
1. What are the prospects of strawbale structures in India?
2. Any statistical data to show the percentage of strawbale users all across the globe?
3. How Why people should opt more and more for strawbale houses?
4. Even if it is so eco-friendly, why dont we see large number of people opting for strawbale houses?
January 7th, 2008 at 8:56 am
Eshita,
Thanks for contacting me. I think you will find answers to most of your questions within this blog. You can use the search bar at the top to search for key words. Just make sure the button is on “StrawBale.com.”
Parts of India will likely be well suited to straw bale construction while others will not. It is climate dependent. Areas of high humidity are harder to work with than dry areas. Rain is okay, but continued humidity is hard to deal with as it increases the chance of bale decay.
You can check out the International Straw Bale Building Registry at http://sbregistry.greenbuilder.com/search.straw. It is not a complete list by any stretch of the imagination, but it does offer some insight into the different regions that most support this type of construction.
The need for highly efficient housing is definitely here. In addition, the need for housing that can be built by people with minimal background in carpentry is also great as many people live in very poorly constructed homes made from scrap materials. Straw offers an alternative to make shit homes and brings the super efficiency with it. Right now, the biggest draw back to SB construction on a mainstream level is lack of education and vanity. Many people think bale builders are crazy and would never build a bale house because they don’t fully understand the technology and how well it works. Others don’t want to spend money on bales, plaster, and other Green aspects because they want to have the flashy counters and appliances instead. All of these attitudes take time to change. I hope this helps and good luck with your project.
January 8th, 2008 at 1:02 am
Thanks a lot Andrew, it was really informative. I’m sure to trouble you in future with my queries. Hope you will not mind.