Burrowing wasps or bees or both

Two insects; the black wasp and the bubble bee seem to be making a home in the earthen walls of the Moonunit. I couldn’t tell which one has been boring holes into the walls. I’m guessing it’s the wasp doing the digging and the bumble bees are just busy inspecting… crawling in and out. You’d expect the wasp to be a Mud Dauber, but it wasn’t the black and yellow type. It may have been the Organ Pipe Mud Dauber, though it doesn’t look like their nest type. I’m sure there are enough spiders crawling around to make for a meal or two. The Moonunit hasn’t been used too much lately. Constant visitors might scare the insects a way a little. I’m not too concerned about the creatures making a home there, though getting rid of them might be difficult.

The cow manure plaster I used 2 years ago is really holding up well. It’s not tough enough to keep insects from creating holes, but it’s holding up to the weather nicely. I used as much cow poo as possible, sometimes up to half. As I recall the mix was something like 1 part clay, 2 parts sand, 1 part cow manure and straw to taste.

So, earthen walls can have insect issues, but as far as I know every wall type does to some extent. Continue Reading…

Scraping off cracked lime plaster from a to-smooth earthen wall

Failure: the omission of expected or required action. I think this is what they call “Another F-ing learning experience”. It’s sometimes necessary to make mistakes to learn what not to do. I thought I’d share mine.

A year ago we plastered a wall with a sand and lime mix. The mix wasn’t very precise and a little thin. It was applied to a wall that had little to no key, nothing for the plaster to hold on to. I have always finished the ‘scratch’ coat with my hands in the past. I guess that left enough of a key or grip, but this was finished with a pool trowel. And huh… not scratched. Continue Reading…

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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I want this southern wall to be mostly cob and earthbags to collect the warmth of the sun. Of course, it would be wonderful to have a pure cob wall, but time does not permit. And after all that’s slow! Here’s the thing though – It’s already cold. I’m pushing my luck with light clay infill. The light clay takes a long time to dry. Even in warm weather you should let the light clay infill dry for a couple of months before plastering. Cob too. It won’t dry in time. Basically, I’m after a wind break for the winter so I can work inside.
 

Light Clay Cram

It’s somewhere in between wattle and daub and light clay infill, but it not really either. I’m making use of my post and beam structure by nailing saw mill ‘waste’, known as mill ends, to the posts. This creates a good lattice for what comes next.

I made some light clay and let it sit out in the sun for an afternoon. The earth absorbed the excess moisture and the clay gets pretty tacky. I took a lump of light clay and placed the in between the open space between the mill ends and cram it over to the side. Packing and pushing. The lump of light clay fills the gap and hangs over the mill ends both inside and outside. I just kept doing that until the openings were full. Let dry in the feirce winds…

After a few days of sun and wind it was time to add mud. I tucked earthen plaster in the gaps and covered the light clay. The straw creates a good key. Now when I go back in the spring to add the infill plaster the wall is ready and I have a wind break for the winter.

This has got to be one of the quickest and low cost ways to create a wall. Rather than building up slowly this allows for the wall to go up first and then thicken up later. The wall is up. The materials were cheap. And the amount of human energy was moderate.

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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