What a first couple of days! After the excitement of getting the bales to site, it has been a whirlwind of learning and re-learning to get our first wall installed. We are learning that many of our bales are a bit soft and/or the strings aren't quite centered, so we have spent a lot of time retying the bales. This is very time consuming and can be frustrating, but it definitely gives us plenty of opportunity to learn the knots that we need to know for resizing bales, as needed. Our straw bale expert, Andrew Morrison, spent the better part of Monday morning teaching us his special straw bale knot and tying process, which includes tossing your body weight on top of the bale to kind of hump them tighter. It is amazing how much of a difference this makes from a starting bale to a tightened, retied bale. Once bales are retied, we notch them as needed to fit around our existing beams, and stacking them in a running bond (similar to tile or brick) to provide strength. When we have a full wall in place, we use tampers to get the bales positioned correctly so that they aren't sticking out on either side. We then use weed whips (or whatever similar term you want to use) to get them flush with our beams and framing. Tomorrow, we will be attaching felt and mesh to prepare for future plastering. The first wall on the first floor is now ready for this next step! If we ever build a straw bale house again (who knows!), we will definitely be pickier with our bales and check the strings a bit closer. We should be able to make these work, but it is going to take us quite a bit longer. With that in mind: we have already added an extra week to our build to cover the extra time that we will need, given what we have learned in these first few days. So if you are interested, please come join us and help! It has been great to meet and work with so many different people who want to learn about straw bale construction. Luckily, many of them have been able to work a couple of shifts. Everyone is welcome for as much or as little time as they have, but training takes a lot of time, so it is great if folks can come back for at least a second shift. This work is tiring and it is definitely time for me to sleep. We hope you can come join us, though!
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AuthorKatie Jones and Peter Schmitt chronicle their building adventure. Archives
January 2024
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