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Reflections On Six Years Of Strawbale Workshops Sue Ewart and Don O’Connor have been running strawbale home building workshops for six years, helping participants from three to 90 enjoy the simple delights of using bales of straw to create energy-efficient, cost-effective shelter. Here they present some of the simple lessons they’ve learned.
WE began our journey with owner building in strawbale in 1997 when we started building our own place. Back then we encountered many obstacles: local government regulations, permit applications, do we need an architect and so on. As we tentatively probed forward we found people like ourselves, struggling with the concept of building for themselves. Swamped by myth, misinformation and mystique these people were being sapped of energy by the system that did not want them to build. Once we began, and with the help of some who were willing to be our mentors, the complexities slowly unravelled and we knew that we could succeed. This prompted us to share our learning with people and over the past six years we have conducted many workshops, working not only on our buildings but on many others in the district. Here we offer some of what we have learned. Strawbale building is simple. Strawbales are big, beautiful, easy to handle building blocks. They are both sides of a wall and the insulation all in one neat package. Strawbale building is easy. Wonderfully communal and very, very satisfying for people who have never built before and for all those who have been told they could not possibly build anything remotely respectable. The lightness of bales (comparatively) and the simplicity of the technique enables almost everyone to make some contribution when building. Our oldest course participant was in his early 90s and our youngest three, and there are many, many in between. Strawbale building is great fun. Working with an organic material that is so forgiving is such a joy. If you put the bale in place and it doesn’t look right, you take it down and readjust it and put it back. If you made the bale too short you stuff the gaps, too long and you pull some out.
Each hex has a bush pole as its central support. Build a home not a house. In the process of building we feel it is important to go for what you want. Find a way to get the style you want, the shape, the feel and the price. Strawbale homes can be very expensive if you choose a top architect and builder or they can be less costly, even cheap — if you do all the work including the design. It becomes your choice. For those of you with less confidence/time/health you can always project manage your strawbale as an owner-builder employing others to do all the labour. Two examples A really nice strawbale cottage has just been completed in Wheatsheaf, near Daylesford in central Victoria. The owners, Donna and Andy McLean, completed our workshop in February 2003 with their builder. Their arrangement was for the builder to be responsible for everything except the strawbaling and the rendering. Donna and Andy also provided some doors, windows and kitchen cupboards, which they had lovingly collected. Andy and Donna led the baling and rendering team and we are proud to say they now have a beautiful two bedroom open plan home, and a delightful brand new baby daughter — who just couldn’t wait and came very early. The house has a coloured concrete slab, earth rendered walls and a fantastic tiled roof. To complement this they have a charming strawbale privacy wall topped with matching roof tiles. Totally Andy’s idea, the capping on this wall proved to be beautiful and functional, protecting the earthen-rendered exterior garden wall from rain on its most vulnerable spot, the top. By the way, this wall was constructed one day and rendered the next with superb artistic guidance from Andy. Andy has retired as a rock singer. He’s the former lead singer of ‘Horse Head’ and is in the final stages of a building design and drafting course, so if you need help with your plans give him a go. Yvie Felix is another of our course participants who has taken the challenge and built her own home. Yvie is a single woman who owned some land in Wheatsheaf and had never built before. She wanted a comfortable small home with her own special touches. She designed it herself and has been actively involved in every aspect of its building — only employing tradespeople when absolutely necessary and more often than not being their other pair of hands on the job. Her own design is of two hexagons joined in the middle. Each hex has a bush pole as its central support; the house is nestled into a slight slope and earth-rendered. Yvie is now eagerly planning her garden. She has a great water collection system and many full tanks to take her through the summer. Earth render Earth render has amazing strength and longevity. Many people believe that concrete render is the way to go. However, we believe that concrete has a harshness that does not feel as good as earth and that when you have a crack in concrete you have major problems fixing it, whereas the earth render is forgiving and easily repairable. Concrete can be good on outdoor furniture and walls as shown by Dunja’s seats at Willow’s Muse (see EG 116). Together we (Dunja, Don and Sue) created a strawbale courtyard for the Ballarat Begonia Festival. However, concrete is a harsh, unforgiving medium when done by hand and we all had wrist problems for months after hand-rendering the courtyard. We do not get these aches and pains when rendering with earth.
Our place (the office and large open plan workshop space for our tipi building and camping business) is still not finished but this adds to its educational appeal because you can see its basics, and we believe it is our evolving masterpiece. Rendered factory walls Earlier this year we strawbaled the internal walls in a factory in Daylesford where we have moved our timber bending business and our showroom is a great example of very large walls all earth and lime rendered. Eleven bales high in places and over 90 metres of wall, it is an impressive project. Here we already had a concrete floor to work on so we have used fencing gripples in places attached to eyebolt loxins in the floor and in other areas we have inset loxins to take 12 mm threaded rod for our bale compression. Given the large expanses we really needed compression on these walls.
We personally prefer the threaded rod method of wall compression because it ‘pulls down’ vertically, not sideways as does the gripple method. With gripples we found the need to pull down on both sides at once, toppling more than one wall while learning the technique! For a top plate we used poles from the bush as a centre top plate. This was successful and very cost effective. There is so much more, we could talk forever about how wonderful strawbale building is, so if you are a little bit interested in strawbale as a building medium — give it a go! Buy a book and do a workshop — there are now many workshops around the country. Start small — build a chook house or a dog kennel — or just jump in with both feet and build your dream home. Good luck. top | FAQ | Resources | Strawbale home | Back to EG |
