Making a wall

So there’s a few things I’d like to point out about this picture above. Firstly, notice that the corner brace has been itself braced by a diagonal piece of wood, screwed into the bottom plate. Also there is a thin layer of ‘biscuits’ underneath the first course of bales. This is not normally done, but we had to make the height slightly more than 6 bales worth in order to align with the front side of the building (that was completed beforehand.) Apparently, when you’re doing this type of build, it doesn’t work to put the biscuit layer on top as it slides around too much.

Also, half-bales are used at the end to stagger the bond of each course, like you would in a brick wall. This gives it more strength. After the wall gets to a certain height, then it should be braced by a simple wooden cross:

Bracing the wall

And when the wall is the right height, cover it with some concrete underlay (black plastic) and peg to keep the rain off:

Protecting the wall

It was astonishing how fast the walls actually went up, but I guess they are rather like huge bricks…

The walls around the door and window frames are done similarly. The goal for these (not always achievable) is that a whole number of bales fit underneath and on top of the frames. We did the measurements a bit wrong and ended up using bale biscuits, but it still works ok:

Window Frame

One thing I really loved about working with bales is that they’re very forgiving. You can make the odd mistake and it’s not the end of the world, especially if you have someone to guide you that’s experienced.

As you can see from many of the pictures (and the one below) bracing – once everything has been squared – is essential to stop movement:

Bracing

Make sure that front-back movement is minimised, as well as side-side. Wooden braces can be nailed or screwed into the bottom plate and the frame itself. For front-back braces, we hammered a short, sharpened post into the ground, and then screwed the brace into that:

Front-back bracing

That’s all for now. To be continued soon…

I found this course after a small trawl on the internet, and figured that if I don’t do it now, I’ll never get around to it, and I am SO glad that it did! Run by husband and wife team Huff ‘n’ Puff (aka John and Susan Glassford) the course went over 5 days (you can do less, but you miss out on the rendering, which is very important.) I met some lovely people too.

One of the things that attracted me to straw-bale (apart from the brilliant UK show Grand Designs) was it’s brilliant insulation properties, low environmental footprint and excellent fire-resistance (once rendered.) It seems that many straw-bale homes don’t need a concrete slab built, but can use a simple rubble trench and concrete bond-beam instead (this will depend on a geo-tech site report and the design of the house though.)

Here are some photos:

A bunch of bales

The bales are delivered to site and inspected. I was surprised to find out that bales come in different shapes and sizes, so you need to know what you’re getting before you do your design (widths tend to be the same though.)

A wee bit of carpentry

I was a bit nervous at first as we had to do some basic carpentry, of which I had next to no skill. John taught us what we needed to know and before long we were using the drop-saw like we were pros! We made the bottom and top plates (these are what holds the bale walls) as well as window and door frames. Actually fairly simple, but there are a few tricks and things to know, such as how to brace these and square them properly. After doing it, it seemed straight forward.

Broken Bales

There were quite a number of half and broken bales which had to be restrung and measured. Sometimes a particular size is needed so these bales are sprayed with their length for easy identification.

Plates

Here we are making the top plate as an exact copy of the bottom plate (the three ‘layers’ that can be seen in the photo, from bottom-up are: concrete bond-beam, bottom plate, top plate.) The bottom plate is filled with pea-rubble and sand. There are also threaded rods poking up that have a cap on to protect from the elements – these are used to compress the wall (hopefully covered later.)

A door frame

The door frame and window frame can be attached to the bottom plates, with a little bit of squaring and support. The two long bits of wood (called ‘stiles’) will penetrate the top plate and will need to be cut off.

Corner Brace

Before the walls can be put up, a corner brace needs to be put in place so that the bales stay roughly in place. These were already made, but seemed simple enough to put together if needed.

Top plate detail

Earlier, I said that the top plate is the same as the bottom, but it’s not quite. There are steel plates that need to be recessed into the top plate. A pair of threaded rods will go through each steel plate and attach to the bottom rods that were protruding from the concrete beam so that the walls can be compressed. The reason for the recess is that another strip of plywood will be nailed on top for waterproofing, and so space for the nut is needed.

I’ll write another blog soon detailing more steps….

I did a 5 day intensive course, run by the amazing Ken and his lovely wife Giovi. The food was just amazing (although there was no coffee which left me with a terrible “cold-turkey” headache for a couple of days.) Five meals a day!

Here are a few pictures I managed to grab, during a break in the torrential downpour.

Marshmellow

herb robert

a nice flower

passionflower

It’s currently producing about one or two a week, which is just perfect. The amazing thing is how fast they grow: the other day I had to pick one that had grown to a couple of kilograms. I made it into a yummy pie by cutting it into cubes & frying it with some onion, eggplant, tinned toms and spices before baking it (with sliced eggplant on top.) Super easy, even I can do it!

I went along to the National folk festival the other day and Tiffany Eckhardt (a fantastic artist singer/songwriter, if you haven’t heard of her) was telling the audience she grows her own veggies and at this time of year she usually has a glut of zucchinis. A friend of her recommended a chocolate zucchini cake receipe, which apparently tastes amazing (but sounds a bit gross.) She wrote a song about it too. Looks like I may have to try that receipe next…

I actually think this is being optimistic.

The trouble is that the Earth is not a ball of rock that heats up and cools down in a simple linear manner. There is an amazingly complex web of interactions (that we don’t fully grasp yet.) For instance, take the current level of warming, not even 1 degree Celcius, and yet the summer artic ice will be gone in a matter of a few years:

Real vs projected Ice-loss

Most scientists until just a couple of years ago, would never have expected the loss to be so rapid (see how the real loss compares with projected losses by the IPCC.)

It’s even worse that that though. The measure that is more valuable is not the area of ice covered, but volume, and that has been declining even faster than the graph above shows. As we lose the artic ice (which acts effectively like a mirror, reflecting heat away) the surrounding area warms up even more rapidly, defrosting vast tracts of Siberian permafrost. This permafrost contains immense stores of carbon dioxide and methane (a greenhouse gas which is shorter lived in the atmosphere, but much more potent.) These gases are locked up in these so-called “clathrates” which are stable only because of the freezing temperatures. Once these start to let-rip, they will further amplify the warming. This is a classic positive feedback. (negative feedbacks, which reduce the effects of global-warming, are unfortunately harder to find – an example would be people dying due to increased heatwaves.)

So, it’s like a tragic domino-effect, with one system affecting many others, which in turn affect others in a vicious cycle. If we can’t control it now, we’ll have no chance once this process gets under way.

Many scientists say that 2 degrees Celcius is a major ‘tipping point’ after which we’ll lose control, but in reality, it’s just an educated guess. It may be 1 degree – we may have already crossed this invisible boundary. There’s just no way of knowing. Look at the artic-ice decline projections again. We’re already tracking much worse than all modelling predictions from just a few years ago. Expect the science to become ever more alarming as the models are refined.

The trouble is that the Earth is much more dynamic, complex and subtle than anyone will likely ever realise. We should be aiming for immediate-as-humanly-possible cessation of emissions that we can control, even if it entails substantial sacrifice, because the alternative will be much, much worse.

Wonderful Copenhagen
There once was a planet called Earth,
Then, 4.5 billion years after birth,
It evolved a new species,
From DNA pieces,
That polluted for all they were worth.

This continued ’til everyone felt,
The impact of artic-ice melt,
A global nightmare,
(Or full of hot-air?)
For many, disaster was spelt.

The science said 350 per mil,
Was the most CO2 we could spill,
If it grows any more,
We’ll see famine and war,
Our chances? Effectively nil.

Our last shot to counter stagnation:
A treaty to unite every nation!
We all tried to fight,
But it wasn’t done right,
Like a roll made with egg but not bacon.

The trouble was there from the start,
Wonderful Copenhagen was breaking apart,
Counting offsets, a subtraction:
A dangerous distraction,
Like methane from a cow’s fart.

This cautionary tale I now tell,
Whilst chiming our lonely death-knell,
The science was clear,
But it fell on deaf-ears,
Humanity was too hard a sell.

http://www.copenhagendiagnosis.org

Then I realised that maybe it’s a good thing. Denial is an emotional reaction and is typically the last stage before acceptance, so perhaps this shows that many people are reacting to the possible truth and all it’s consequences. A big moment for me was realising that climate change will profoundly affect food supplies, and not just make things ‘a bit warmer.’ I’ve also learnt that nature is interlinked in a myriad of ways we will probably never fully understand, and that you can’t tackle, say, the dwindling water of the Murray-Darling river system, without tackling climate change.

There are no easy answers and my belief is that we have to change our behaviors quite a bit as well as governments putting in regulation, encouraging investment in cleaner forms of energy and so on. Our government certainly hasn’t been up-front and honest about this, and continues to peddle the line that things can go on as before.

BTW – check out this brilliant, brilliant short film about the fallicy of ‘cap and trade’ systems for carbon pricing:

http://www.storyofstuff.com/capandtrade/

You can even do this on concrete if you make it thick enough (at least 30cm once it’s decomposed) but on grass you get the benefit of encouraging earthworms to come and visit – their slime is the magic ingredient to help build soil structure. (Personally, I thought this was a bit of a myth before I started as I couldn’t see how earthworms could even live in the soil here to be able to get to the no-dig bed, but I found some the other day so… myth busted!)

I read up on no-dig techniques beforehand from different sources and they pretty much said the same thing (lucerne hay is vital, and you need some blood & bone, chicken manure etc for a fertilier.) This is actually rubbish. All you need is some organic material that can break down over time. Yes, lucerne hay (alfalfa) is good, but you can use other types of hay or straw or whatever.

Here’s what I did for my ‘vegan’ no-dig:

1. Made a border with 4 wooden posts and folded hessian cloth wrapped around the outside (stapled in place)
2. laid down some newspaper sheets and wet them (just so that underneath grass etc dies off)
3. Put down a thick layer of sugar cane mulch.
4. Thin layer of compost (my own mixed with a few bags of mushroom compost)
5. Thin layer of hay (I did use lucerne)

Wet the lot. Oh, here’s a tip – if you’re going to collect bales of hay, make sure you use a trailer or get them to deliver it. I stuffed a couple in the car and it took several hours to clean up

Now wait. I waited for about a year because I’m lazy, but I’m sure you only need to wait a month or two. Wet it occasionally and the organic matter will start to break down and the bed will shrink down as it decomposes. If you’re really keen you can add extra layers until it’s nice and thick. You need it to break down as there needs to be enough substance for roots to grow into, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to absorb nutrients and water.

I like the hay on top as it protects the underlying soil from getting baked (our summers get scaldingly hot) and keeps in a fair amount of moisture, although it can interfere a bit if you’re growing things from seed.

Voila!

Need to get some extra shade cloth.

This blog is an attempt to catalog both my successes and my failures as an absolute beginner gardener, and also to expouse some informed opinion along the way on topics such as the environment, politics (from time to time) and various other things that come to mind.