I’ve been enjoying the latest newsletter articles by Coenraad Rogmans over at House Alive!. In the article, Building with Sand, Straw and Clay, Coenraad talks about the many variations of the magical mixture of these ingredients. There is a spectrum of ratios that create different variations of these base materials. Including cob, light clay, wattle and daub, bale walls, bale cob, earthen floors, plasters, renders, and paints . Within each application one would use a different ratio for a particular result. Say for instance you are working on a cob wall with built in niches. Ianto Evans teaches about corbel cobs. Cob with long stocks of straw for added tensile strength. Another is light clay, a mixture of straw tossed like a salad with the dressing being clay slip, or watered down clay. Or for an earthen oven a sand clay mixture. You can see how versatile it can be!
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Strawbale.com is a very feature rich site including a blog, natural building articles and a catalogue of straw bale house plans. Andrew Morrision is a professional builder based out of Southern Oregon. He operates Straw Bale Innovations, LLC. and is the creator and builder of the Straw Bale Village in Jacksonville, Oregon. I’m very excited about his podcast “Building Green” and blog because he shares the wisdom and experience that only a professional builder can. And he seems to find the time to update the site often.

Check it out Strawbale.com »

I had to fill a space in a strawbale wall above the bales and betwixt some rafters. I had filled the space with some light clay a year ago, but it was wet and never dried resulting in decay. The light clay could have worked if it had a chance to dry over the warmer months, but I placed it in the wall during fall so it didn’t get a chance to dry. In the spring I ripped the rotting material out and left the cavity empty. The only thing between the inside and the outside was a 4″ cob wall attached to a 2 x 12″ wood stud - which does the trick, but in the winter months collects frost.

This fall I just wanted to fill the cavity and provide some insulation to the upper part of the wall. The choices were to create small bales that would fit into the the spaces; try more light clay ( this time drier ), or pack some poly-propylene bags with straw and stuff it. I choose to use the bale bags this time.
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I found a nifty straw bale calculator over at the Harvest Homes web site. If you know the dimensions of your house it will output not only how many bales you need, but also mesh, top plate, plaster data and more.

A must-have tool for the natural builder arsenal!