greenspree.ca at The Sietch

The straw bales have gone in! Well most of them anyways. We had a great three days of weather and productive hard work this long weekend and almost all the bales are installed! As suspected the bales that needed to be cut and small areas requiring custom bales of stuffed flakes were the most tim consuming taking up the lion’s share of the time. We learned a lot and gained insight into how we could make the process easier if we do this again in the future!Tying the bales wasn’t nearly as difficult as I had thought it might have been. I’ll post some photos of how we tied knots later when i have more time. Also, chainsaws and bales are made for each other! I was sculpting bales with notches and grooves with my chainsaw with little deformation of the bales integrity. It’s all in knowing where to tie new strings and how to handle the cut bales.

Throughout this week we will be trying to get one wall ready for plaster and then continue the process around the building. So windows, trims, flashings, etc.. are next then spraying on the clay slip, hopefully all this weekend. We are going to have to look at getting temporary heat as this process has started way later than we wouild have liked. It may mean more tarps and perhaps temporary wall framing outside the building. I don’t like the thought of having to do it but reality is a harsh teacher!

Hopefully we’ll get as much help this weekend as we did last weekend! See you there!

In my last post about the house I mentioned that the bales would be arriving on the 18th or so, this alas did not happen. Our farmer had a trip he had to take for two weeks and on the 17th the flax was still not ready to cut. So we weighed our alternatives and started calling around to see if we could get another source. We did, and got three wagon loads of straw ables delivered over the last two weeks.

Last night we finally installed a few test bales to see how well our notching system would work. It needs to be fine tuned but everything is looking OK! We also tested out our home made “schutz gun” clay slip sprayer. It’s basically an undercoating spray gun used upside down with a large gravity fed hopper instead og the siphon feed it’s meant to employ. It cost $27 from Canadian Tire and it works great!

The other step forward we made was with the foundation insulation parging. We used three pails of Parge Plus over the rigid foam covering the foundation edges as cement parging will not adhere well to foam. What a nightmare! The product is thick and hard to work and sets up extremely fast! By the third bucket we had the hang of it but it was tough, slogging work!

And so we are making the last preparatory steps this week to go full out over the long (Thanksgiving) weekend installing the straw bales! I am hoping as many old friends and new ones stop by to help out or even just watch, leave a comment if you need directions, and i hope our house inspires people do make greener choices in the way they build their house!