Home Grown House

Tuesday, 27 November 2012

Cheese Floor

Medieval Cheese Floor

Notes from on site

An earthen floor is not the obvious choice for a building of my size, but as we do not have proper foundations and as I am working with straw, these are a bit lighter than other masonry building materials. Heavy building materials need proper foundations. This being a fun experimental project for TV is an exception. The weight of clay will be kept to a minimum as its only 75mm thick. It will sit on a home made site sourced alternative to battened plywood between the floor joists.

The main components used here were sand and chalk, with clay and milk as binders. Clay shrinks as it dries and cracks; sand, grit and chalk reduce the shrinkage. You can of course just keep filling the cracks up with more clay until it looks ok.

Generally: too much sand = a crumbly mix; too little sand = a cracking mix.

The Cheese Floor

The Cheese floor is a medieval method of adding a fine finish to a earth floor.

Unpasteurized milk is said to be best. Though there are no exact measurements for any of it. Guess work is the best way forward. I will start testing when this rain stops!

the laying of the floor.

Tuesday, 20 November 2012

How Many Bales?

Using this set up.. I will require

Layer 1: 15

Layer 2: 14 & 2 halves

Layer 3: 15

Layer 4: 12 & 2 halves

Layer 5: 14 & 4 halves

Layer 6: 16

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Total: 86 bales & 8 halves

So I should need 94 bales. But there are always accidents and anomalies which are out of my control, such as bad bales.

Bales as an organic building product are many shapes and sizes, and even ones made in the same machine are differing dimensions.

I have 100 bales stored and ready, so that limits me to 6 accidents... fingers crossed.

Sketchings out on site

Sketching/Doodling... the best way to remember is not to forget....

on site sketches

Alternative options for making the base and top ladders out of the Branches and Timbers I have at home on site.

Using a timber frame with mortise and tenon joints with pegs to hold the bales in compression.

This will eliminate the need for wires and lorry straps and can make a very aesthetically pleasing feature to the finished building.

For temporary structures like the one I will be erecting, Tyre foundations are useful if you have them lying around like we do. They are easy to ram with earth and also have a bit of give from concrete foundation rigidity.

Rippledown Pictures

More Photos courtesy of Mark Saich of our Bale Building Course at Rippledown Environmental Education Centre

Lisa cutting stub stakes to length for the top ladder

Jonathan and Daphne and I making a simple window profile

Driving in the stakes is hard work!

Lisa and I splitting bales for the window frame.

Daphne and Darren Splitting Bales

Jonathan sharpening stakes.

Darren and I checking the end profile for plumb

Third course up and ready for first stakes

Daphne and I driving the first stakes in

Almost there!

Trimming the walls with a hedge cutter

All Done!

Monday, 19 November 2012

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.