Principles of Bale Design and Layout.

Clients should be able to design their own straw bale houses very easily, as it follows common sense principles.

Points which I have come across that are of great help:

• Know the dimensions of your bales before you draw up your final plan, I know mine are 350mm Width, 300mm high, 950mm long.  As this is the John deere Baler which we have on the farm.

The best thing to do is just confirm dimensions of bales from the source of your bales, as they vary a lot.

• Whole bales are much easier to deal with, and a great deal faster, so these should be used where possible, half bales are best, and no bales of less than half width should be used in openings, as they are weaker.  
• Another point with openings is to make sure that they do not occur any less than one bale away from corners (especially in load bearing).  
• It also makes construction a lot easier if the openings are dimensions of bales!

our window was half a bale wide and 3 bales high.  

• Remember when building loading (Nebraska) bearing that the bales will compress more than we will compress using the lorry straps due to the weight of the roof.  On average you should allow 10mm per bale. We have to make sure we consider this when we make window frames if they butt up to the top ladder.

With straw bale building, from everyone I have spoken to, it is more a case of common sense and practical experience, than engineering laboratory tests, that are put into practice here.  Tried and tested methods prevail.

I will now start my own testing using purely what I have on site.

 Home Grown House.