Shingled Walls

Blogs - Shire Strawbale Home, Green Building + Design, Green Building Blogs, Green Homes, Straw BaleDecember 08, 20100 Comments

Over the course of the summer we decided to do a rain screen over top of our stuccoed straw bale walls. It took us a little longer than we had hoped and it was more work than we anticipated but I think the results look fantastic!

It feels great to have the scaffolding put away for a while and I am hoping not to have to use it again for a good long while.

Projects for next year include a wood shed, more landscaping, a chicken coop perhaps, some raised garden beds closer to the house, cleaning up the shed and running power to it, planting lots more trees, cutting the 8 cord of firewood sitting in 8 foot lengths in the yard and maybe a deck!

(Cross-posted at green-spree.ca)

Straw Bale Home Building Primer

Blogs - Shire Strawbale Home, Green Building + Design, Green Building Blogs, Green Homes, Straw BaleDecember 10, 20090 Comments

IMG_5788.JPGSo you want to build your own straw bale home.  You’ve seen them in green home building books and on TV shows, you saw green home builders wax poetic about their homes low impact on the environment and connection to the local ecology.  You’ve researched all the possible alternative home building techniques and the thought of conventional framing makes you shudder.  You are going to build a straw bale home no matter what obstacles the MAN and doubters have to say!  Well far be it for me to try and dissuade you!

There are some things you should know and experience first though.  This, in all likely-hood, is going to be one of the most challenging things you will ever take on.   Continue Reading →

The last few months on the house!

Blogs - Shire Strawbale Home, Green Building + Design, Green Building Blogs, Green Homes, Straw BaleOctober 22, 20090 Comments

Finally I have gotten round to getting some photos uploaded! We are officially moved in, the mortgage has been completed, and we are “done”, although I don’t think the work will ever stop! There’s some niggly trim work to complete, a few touch-ups, there will be on-going stucco maintenance and inspections, fire wood to cut and split, a wood shed to build, the storage/garden shed to finish and organize, an addition in the next couple of years probably, landscaping, a garden or two, walkways, decks, etc… But for the next little while we are going to take it easy and enjoy a little break!

Enjoy the photos!

IMG_3889.JPG Forms for the concrete countertops. Keith wanted to try his hand at concrete countertops and we volunteered as the test case! Continue Reading →

Interior stucco completed!

Blogs - Shire Strawbale Home, Green Building Blogs, Green Homes, Straw BaleFebruary 12, 20090 Comments

This past Sunday I put the last couple trowel fulls of interior stucco on the walls in the kitchen!  I have some photos from the day before showing the progress so far.  Now we are on to some finishing work like seam filling, cleaning, trim and limewashing.

IMG_0677.JPG Continue Reading →

Interior Stucco and Humidity

Blogs - Shire Strawbale Home, Green Building Blogs, Products + MaterialsNovember 01, 20080 Comments

We’ve started doing interior stucco and almost immediately ran into a few stumbling blocks. Number one was the fact that without horse manure in the stucco the mixer didn’t do as good a job mixing the product. Apparently the manure was acting to keep the clay in the mix from clumping together and when we tried to mix the stucco without it all we got was a mixer full of wet sand and hard clay lumps. We would then have to mix the resulting mess by hand, essentially making the mixer useless.

The second issue was the straw bales were starting to mold after we applied slip to the wall. This was much more worrisome than the clay not mixing in. This was the inside of our house where our new born was going to be living and breathing, with mold on the walls! We theorize that there must be mold spores on the straw and that when the wet slip was sprayed onto the walls it gave the spores the moisture needed to bloom. Continue Reading →

Step 5 – Stucco (Update)

Blogs - Shire Strawbale Home, Community, Green Building + Design, Green Building Blogs, Green HomesJuly 07, 20080 Comments

The stucco is taking much longer than anticipated, the weather in May and June being so dismal being part of the problem and just the shear amount of work to do on the stucco. We’ve had some great help the past few weekends from great friends and family though and are making headway! We’ve started work on the finish coat this past week and got a good start on the north wall. After troweling it on you sponge it to seal the surface and heal any drying cracks. It turns out looking fantastic and looks just like adobe. (gallery below the fold)

Continue Reading →

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