Looking back at the scrawl that is my notes for last weeks "Strawbale Design/Build" class at Yestermorrow, I can only hope that I will retain everything I've learned and not let it drain away with the next downpour of building know-how or even worse, just fade away with time. I'm anxious to put it to good use and get involved in some project, perhaps with Steven, a friend of one of our instructors who is building a timber frame, strawbale, two-story addition to his lovely off-the-grid cabin in the mountains of Vermont. We visited his place in a field trip and the amount of work that goes into even as modest a project as this is absolutely staggering. But what an awesome space it will be when it's done.... A high-performing, cozy, one-of-a-kind, hand built home that should last long enough to keep in his family for several generations at the very least. So much emphasis in building these days is in the value of the investments in dollars and cents, a.k.a. real estate...and to some extent, there is nothing wrong with that notion. But the concept of building a home that will provide you with comfort and shelter, one you can grow old in, then pass it down to your children is what really appeals to me.
Making the walls of your house out of straw makes some people squirm. "Will it burn easily?", they ask... or, "couldn't you just push it over?" Well, the answer is no and no, but I don't want to get too far into the specs of bale building here. It's just interesting to me how building materials and methods are introduced and evolve over time to suit specific people in specific places. I've heard that strawbale building has come a long way within the last 10-20 years. People in the Northeast were looking at what a few folks were doing with it in the Southwest and tried the same thing. Well, that didn't work so well, because this, unlike modular mass produced materials is not a "one-size-fits-all" type of construction. It's very specific to place; region, climate, microclimate, siting, and numerous other requisite factors. But because of the mistakes that people have made and learned from, then passed on that knowledge to others, we can feel confident building just about anywhere! But like any kind of building, the thing that makes or breaks it is attention to details.
I can't sing enough praise for our 2 instructors, Tim and Deva. They did a great job of balancing lecture, slideshows, discussions and outings with hands-on training. Because the class is only 6 days long, we worked on a demo building that is basically a square structure with 3 walls. 2 of them are exposed timber frame on the interior (a popular scenario for SB building) and the third is a standard stick frame stud wall. In lieu of a roof, there are a few different roof end details framed in just to get an idea of how to interface with different soffits (i.e. horizontal soffit return, angled soffit return, exposed rafter tails). I really would have liked to build a real "for use" structure but with all the information and instruction, we would have been hard pressed to see something through until the end. It was only a 5.5 day class, so time was tight!
Just to get an idea of some of the topics we covered, here are a "few":
How to source bales, rate them and cherry-pick the primo ones for building, how crucial it is that they remain dry and how to do so, how to stack them for the various frame and roof configurations, the many methods for attaching them to framing and to each other for strength, how to resize the bales to fit either by impaling them with a huge sewing needle, threading new twine and retying or by giving them a shave with a chainsaw (my favorite method), how to notch bales to fit neatly around framing members, bottom of the wall details and how they interface with foundations, what to do around window and door openings, lintels, using metal "blood" lath to "basket" areas that need some shaping or reinforcement, using burlap for bridging over 2 materials in the same plane, how to run electrical work, finishes aka plaster (could be another full week class in and of itself), finding native clay sediment to make clay slip (a smooth milkshaky mix of clay and water) and adding it to straw to create a damp straw-clay mix to stuff into voids and create a nice substrate for plaster, spraying the clay slip on the walls as a sort of primer before plastering and finally mixing the slip with sand and straw in different ratios for various base coat plaster recipes.......THEN the fun begins. SCHMEARING it on by hand to really work it into all those nooks and crannies. The next couple of coats are applied by trowel, but this is a very tactile experience, if you're into that sort of thing.
The goals for this class in my mind, are to inspire us to think outside the box, the power of community and human interaction and to establish a relationship with these materials.. It succeeded at all of these. To check out lots of photos I've taken of this class and lots of other things, look at my picasa page: http://picasaweb.google.com/vadutch
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