Adventures in Mud and Straw: Catch Up: October

Oy, OK, continuing......and the metal roof gets finished!

October 1 - 2 (Days 40 & 41)

They finished installing the metal roof.

October 3rd - no work was done on the house.

I don't have notes about October 4th, sigh...

October 5-7, I worked on the house!

I installed the "sprags" - the long nails that are pounded about 1" into the sill plate that then act like velcro when you stick the bales down on them. Brian had also brought up some 3/4" gravel and I spread that in the channels between the sill plates as a capillary break.

Measured and ready.

Close up of sprags and gravel.

Different angle.

At the kitchen sink wall.

October 8 - no work on the house.

October 9

Brian and Robin worked for a couple of hours.

October 14

The plumber was here working on vents for sinks, washing machine and toilet.

Bathroom sink vent.

Kitchen sink vent - remember this, we all should have seen the problem.

Toilet vent going up and through the roof.

They do a good job of reinforcing the studs where the vents pass through.

More reinforcements.

Shower vent - we later rerouted where the water source is for shower head.

Toilet vent.

Washing machine vent and water source.

* * * *

Now, for a little bit of extra information...

While Brent was at his conference 9/27-10/5, he was asked to assist a friend on a research project in the British Virgin Islands. He'd been to assist there previously. The timing was a challenge, but we talked and he went. So, the straw became a bit of a fiasco. It was supposed to arrive around the 8th, then the 9th, then the 10th, then the following week. Brent was supposed to take off for this next trip on the 18th. We thought we'd have a week of being able to get bales put up, have the electricians in after the first course, and then us get back to work again.

So, finally we hear the straw chauffeur is headed to CO on Sunday the 13th. He'll stay the night and load up Monday the 14th and head to his home location of Las Cruces staying the night there and bringing the bales to us on Tuesday the 15th. Well, on Monday we hear that he's been pulled over, and his trailer (and our straw) confiscated. They said his VIN didn't match the license plate on his trailer. Of course, we have no idea how this is going to work out and when the straw will come and Brent leaves on the 18th. Fortunately, the driver was able to stay the night in Albuquerque (where he was pulled over) and get the VIN thing straightened out. He left Tuesday and just came straight to our place. He didn't bother to tell us until he arrived that the reason they pulled him over is that he was over loaded and they KEPT 40 bales of our straw. Then the new panic is - do we have enough?? Did we pay for those 40 bales we never got? Our contractor says he was charged less than quoted, so I guess we didn't. The poor driver probably made no money on this.

No pictures of the truck/trailer as we were too busy unloading. We had one person handling the stacking, one person up on top of the bales passing them down and four of us moving them from the truck into the house for stacking. It was nice to have a covered indoor place to stash them. The young men helping us cracked every straw related joke ever invented and then invented some of their own. It was very entertaining and definitely helped ease my stress!

Brent and I got right to work to get the first course of straw laid down before dark. We had to get that down before the electricians could do their rough in on the bale walls.

October 16th Day 40

The electricians came in to put in the boxes that we needed in the bale walls. They needed to go between course one and two, so we are glad that we could get the first course laid last night and the electricians could come on in.

Tools for resizing and notching bales.

I was able to come across a folding table to use for our bale resizing table at a garage sale. Brent made the rasps needs to "smooth" the bale ends. He used the saw to cut notches into the bale when we need to fit them into some spots by some box beams.

Bale needles being used for resizing the bale.

Brent working on resizing bale.

Notched bale.

Notching bale around kitchen water supply and sink vent. Yes, we still hadn't noted the problem.

First course in guest room/office.

First course master bedroom and closet.

Guest room two courses up and a window buck installed.

So, unfortunately the top of the window would have seemed oddly low if we had set the buck on top of the second course, and the bottom of it would have seemed a bit high if we had set it on a full third course. So, we had to make some custom mini bales to set the window buck on. You can also see the outlets in this picture.

Kitchen and utility room walls.

Adding metal lathe and bamboo pins.

Metal lathe and bamboo pins - the lathe attached to the kitchen window buck.

The white "sheet" is the shower area.

Outlet box - we straightened it later.

Brent adjusting the outlet boxes to be sure they are secure and straight.

As per code, UF wire is used when wire must be run through the bale walls.

Some more notching around a box beam.

Bamboo pins.

Per code, every other course of bales requires bamboo pins.

Looking at west side of house - utility room and guest room/office.

October 17th

Brent and I busted our butts (again) to get as many bales up as possible and we chose the more challenging spots to tackle so that I wasn't left trying to do those alone.

We got a lot done.

Blurry - but you can see we've made a dent in the pile.

Back of master closet - done!

Utility room - north wall done, almost done with west wall.

Exterior of utility room north wall.

So, as you are putting these bale courses up, you have to remember to create a running bond - like bricks. You have to remember to pin every other course. You have to remember to put your metal lathe in. Pinning the top courses is a PITA. Creating the notches in some of these spots really sucks, and our contractor designed to try and minimize that kind of thing. As the bales are going up, you need to keep an eye on your wall - it needs to be plumb! No tilting in or out, no undulating. Once the bales are up, you have to take the rasps to both faces of the bales and work them to smooth them a bit and get rid of loose straw.

We didn't worry about the rasping or the stuffing of seams and nooks/crannies (stuffing loose straw into spots like that helps with the insulation ability of the wall and fire resistance - no air pockets) as those were things I could do while Brent was gone. You do, however, stuff in between bale ends and bale ends/box beams as you stack.

October 18 - October 31: Brent was gone.

I drove Brent to the local airport on October 18th. There wasn't supposed to be any chance of rain, but on the radio, I heard said a chance of sprinkles. I checked weather when I got home and regularly for the next couple of hours - and no chance of rain, that then changed to slight chance of sprinkles. Nothing on the radar. I stepped out to get water to do dishes and saw a wall of gray to the west and was like "Oh, Sh!t!" and ran to put up tarps on the bale walls. Oh, man. It was awful. (I said a lot of bad words VERY loudly.) OSHA would have been terribly upset with me, I'm sure. It was not easy to do on my own and I was having to go higher on the ladder than I should, etc. Anyhow, got it done and I didn't fall, phew.

October 19

I installed some of the 5/8" dowels that needed to be put in everywhere that a framed wall met a bale wall. This had to be done at each course. I also straightened some of the outlet boxes and put up a few bales and some lathe.

October 21

So, remember that I said take note that there's something wrong in this picture and none of us picked up on it?

Kitchen sink vent.

Kitchen sink window.

Well, there's a window right above the damned kitchen sink. The plumber should have realized that, should have checked the plans before he put the vent in. <rolling eyes> But, even we and our contractor missed it. So, the plumber fixed sink vent today. It now goes around the window buck.

October 22

Brian and Ramon (mini split installer guy) came by briefly to talk about our needs. No work done on house

October 23

I had clay delivered for my earthen plaster.

October 25

I had sand and crusher fines delivered for my earthen plaster.

October 23-25

I heavily researched mini split heat pumps as I wasn't happy with Brian's choice. It was very stressful as we were concerned about energy efficiency since we are running this off our solar setup. The electricians also couldn't come back out to finish up the bale wall electrical stuff until I could tell them what the power needs were and I couldn't finish stacking the bales in the bedrooms until they did that. This is the kind of thing Brent would have much more easily researched and decided but he was out of the country. I finally got it figured out and put in the "cart" and sent to him to order. No work done on house

October 27

I began slaking clay (hydrating it). I had to go and buy a drill that could handle a 1/2" plaster paddle so I could mix the clay and water. The clay I got is called "adobe dirt" by the local supplier. I put it through a 1/8" screen before I mix it with water. The consistency I looked for was like sour cream.

I did 1:1:1 of sand, slaked clay and straw. My slaked clay was wet enough I didn't need to add additional water. I was using this mixture to press into the seams between bales and especially where bale corners meet. I found that one layer wasn't enough and I wait until it is dry and apply a second layer and that seems to be bringing me level to the bale faces.

Drill and plaster paddle.

Slaked clay.

First coat of "discovery".

October 30

I've given up on trying to keep track of what work day this is Day whatever. There are often days that aren't full work days, and it just got hard to keep track.

Today, we had electricians and gas plumbers working. The electricians were able to finish the electrical stuff that had to go through bale walls (for the mini split heat pumps). The gas plumbers put in the lines for our dryer, tankless on demand water heater and cooking stove. The contractor brought out the mini split heat pumps to stash at the house.