This weekend I spent a day helping stuff the walls of a straw/clay home. Having been constructed with natural materials, a straw/clay home is a canary’s dream home: a true sanctuary.
This is a beautiful, GA Cook Co. (Maple City, MI), white-oak timber-frame home that is receiving a 12” layer of straw clay “outsulation”. After the walls are stuffed it will be sided with wood and hand-plastered with clay, sand, lime and natural pigments.
From the builder, Thomas Hirsch of Bungalow Builders, building with straw and clay means:
– using materials that did not come in a disposable (or non-disposable, perhaps) packaging!
– using materials that were not sourced from a 3rd world country or even out of this country…or even out of this county!
-buying supplies locally and not from a big box store
– “waste” gets worked into the landscape
– a very small carbon footprint.
– the R-value of wall system gets a boost from “thermal mass effect”: walls hold heat & re-radiate back slowly over time. Humidity is also moderated: no static electricity buildup when covered with natural clay/lime/sand/mineral pigmented plasters. Micropores available in surfaces treated in this way also have an air filtering quality. The list of subtle enhancements to a healthy living environment goes on.
-there are some things in life that some of us never grow out of…like playing in the mud!
-the 3 little pigs were on to something
-and hey, we even get a building permit to do this
-the FBI might consider this subversive, so that’s sexy, right?
– this is an equal opportunity event. Veteran stuff-meisters & newbies welcome.
Links to more information on natural building:
http://www.bungalowbuilders.org/Site/Home.html
http://www.designcoalition.org/projects/ecological.htm
-
- What’s left of the crew at the end of the day from the second day of stuffing the walls. It’s like an old-fashioned barn raising. It takes a community to form the walls of a straw/clay home.
-
- Exterior of home with wall forms in place.
-
- The straw has to be fluffed before it is sent into the tumbler and mixed with the clay-slip.
-
- The clay-slip trough. There’s a bucket brigade that takes the slip from the trough to the tumbler.
-
- Tumbling the straw and clay so that each piece of straw is perfectly coated.
-
- Straw/clay mix being tumbled and sent up the conveyor into the house.
-
- Straw/clay mix moving up the conveyor and into the house.
-
- Once the mix comes off of the conveyor, it’s taken by wheelbarrow to wherever it is needed in the house.
-
- Forking mix into the wall forms. The young woman is headed upstairs to position herself for packing the mix into the forms.
-
- The mix being forked into the wall forms. You can see the you woman’s feet waiting to stomp the mix down into the wall forms.
-
- The smallest of us are put into the walls with the straw/clay mix to stomp the mixture down into the forms. We won’t leave her there.
-
- Wheel barrows receiving the mix.
-
- Tumbler mixing the the clay-slip with the straw and the conveyor belt taking the mixture into the house.
-
- Buckets of clay-slip waiting to be poured into the tumbler and mixed with the straw.
-
- Mixing up the day’s clay-slip.
-
- Interior with wall forms still covering yesterdays stuffed walls.
-
- Wheel barrows waiting for the wall stuffing to begin.
-
- Window opening and yesterday’s wall forms being removed so the walls can cure.
-
- Interior stuffed straw/clay wall with the wall form removed.
-
- Looking down into the wall forms at the packed straw clay. There’s a sapling placed every few feet as “rebark”.
-
- Pulverizing and sifting locally sourced clay.
-
- Fluffing straw for the tumbler.
Everything About Wool Felting
http://www.nancyzieman.com/blog/blog-tour/quick-column-quilts-book-and-blog-tour/
A Woman A Day 