STACKING BALES!

The day finally arrived for us to start stacking bales and have our dream finally start to look like a reality.  Before the stacking could begin, Tom and his crew had to do a lot of prep work.

First the plaster crew came in and shaved the top of the  insulation off at a 45 degree angle around the entire foundations of both the house and the casita.  Then they nailed a wire mesh over the insulation and then plastered over all of it.  Once that was finished, Tom, Luis and Spencer had to prepare the area where the bales would sit on the concrete slab.  The first step was painting a 17 inch wide strip of sealer onto the concrete.  Then a thin layer of insulation was put down, over which a frame of redwood 2" x 4"s were laid.  This may sound simple but remember they set big threaded bolts and allthread into the concrete during the pour so holes needed to be drilled into the redwood 2" x 4"s for all those to poke through.  Washers and nuts were tightened down on the bolts to hold the redwood frames in place.

Top down view of the redwood 2" x 4" frames

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Close up of the threaded bolts holding the redwood frame to the slab.  The pink is the insulation and the dark brown color under the insulation is the sealer.

Close up of the allthread rods with a long bolt screwed to the top.  An 8' long allthread rod will be screwed into the long bolt later in the build.

Probably the most important people on site for the big day, besides us of course, were Gurudas and Sam.  They are straw bale building experts that live in Tucson and will be helping us throughout the rest of the building process.  In addition to Tom, Luis, Spencer, Will and Ray (our architect) we were able to coax Andrew (Tom's son) out of the office for the morning.  Also, one of Nancy's old co-workers John, who built a couple of straw bale houses 20 some years ago, was able to come out and help.

The first order of the day was having Gurudas give us all a class on how to re-tie / re-size a bale to a specific size.  This is a very important skill when building with straw bales as no two bales are exactly the same size (most are around 52" long) and no wall is ever the exact length of the bales, thus you end up with a gap in the wall that is less than the length of a standard bale.  

Guru giving us all instructions on how to re-tie / re-size a bale

Luis, Spencer, Gurudas and Andrew learning how to re-tie a bale with Tom looking on

The next step in the process was to fill the gap in the redwood frames with vermiculite.  The gap needed to filled in order to provide insulation and vermiculite is the product of choice as it is light and easy to spread.

Will and Jeff spreading the vermiculite in the redwood frames

Once all the instruction was over and the vermiculite was in place, it was time to start stacking!  We decided to start on the casita since it didn't have any windows or doors in the walls, thus better to begin with something simple.  As is the tradition, we had the honor of placing the first bale!

The first bale!

Once the first bale was in place everyone got in on the action and the casita walls started to take shape.  Remember, these bales had been out at the site for about a month so we weren't sure what might have made it a home.  Lucky for us we only found one critter during the stacking.

Our first scorpion for the property

John and Will stacking bales, while Gurudas and Jeff re-size bales

Gurudas showing off his stacking expertise

Casita walls 3/4 of the way built.  One more row to go.

While we were all stacking bales, Tom and Luis were busy building the window and door bucks for the house.  These needed to be braced in place before we could start stacking bales for the house.  

Tom building the window buck for the main bedroom

Luis stuffing the box beams with straw and Tom bracing the window buck for the shower window in the main bathroom

Jeff gets to use the big boy tools

Big smiles for seeing our dream turn into a reality

After you have the straw bales stacked, the next step is to "sew" them together.  To accomplish this a team of two people  use a "needle" which is about 3' long.  One person threads the needle with baling twine and then pushes the needle through the wall.  The other person standing on the opposite side of the wall unthreads the needle and signals the other person to pull the needle back through the wall.  Then the needle is pushed back through the wall and the other person threads the needle and the needle and baling twine are pulled back through the wall.  After this a loop is tied in one end of the twine and the twine is pulled tight and tied off.

The needle (hand blacksmithed by Gurudas)

Threading the eye of the needle

The needle in the wall

Needling is a big undertaking.  Each bale needs to be stitched twice horizontally to the bale on either end it and then stitched twice vertically to the bales both on top of and below it.  If you think about it too hard your head will start to hurt but once you have stitched a couple of bales it starts to make sense.  This stitching is the first step in making the walls more stable.

The stitching pattern


We had a pretty good system going but we learned that you really should stitch the first three layers together before trying to stack the top layer of bales.  The western part of the southern wall of the house fell over as we were putting on the top layer of bales.  You would think this would be a big delay, but in actuality the walls goes back up really fast because you have already re-tied the smaller bales and thus solved the wall puzzle.  So all you have to do is put the puzzle back together which goes really fast.

Gurudas and Sam surveying the puzzle

 

The puzzle has been solved!


We were very thankful that there was no rain forecasted while we were stacking bales.  But we weren't thrilled with the above normal temperatures.  It was just over 100 F (38 C) which made for a very hot day of work.  We did plan ahead and bring out our pop-up tent to provide a little shade for our lunch break.  We were planning on leaving it up for next couple of days too, but Mother Nature had other plans.  While Gurudas, Sam, Ray and us were finishing up the last couple of stitches we heard what sounded like a small train heading our direction from the west and before we knew what was happening a dustless dust devil sucked up the pop-up tent and launched it about 75' in the air!   We all watched with mouths agape as it then plummeted to the ground missing Gurudas's car by only about 10' before it bounced once and ended up tangled in the barbed wire fence.  So much for the shade.  

What was our pop-up

We all let out of a sigh of relief until we turned around and saw our own version of the Big Bad Wolf and the Three Little Pigs!  The dust devil had gone over the casita and the northern half of the eastern wall had taken a tumble.  The funny thing was none of us even it heard it fall.  Gurudas and Sam inspected the scene and determined no harm had been done and that we should be able to stand it up the next day when we had more manpower on hand.

We don't like the Big Bad Wolf

One more thing for the Day 2 to-do list

And just like that Day 1 of the stacking had come to an end.

Day 1 summary

Bright and early Friday September 25th we were back at it.  When we got to the property we were surprised to see that a couple of our neighbors had wandered over to see how things were going.  We had never met these neighbors and they weren't very talkative or even very friendly, but they hung out for an hour or so before wandering away back into the desert.

Our visiting neighbors ... guess we better keep the gate closed in the future

First task of the day was to get the casita wall stood back up and then it was on to the house walls.

Sam and Ray re-stacking the casita wall

We had another one of our friends come out and join in on the fun.  Lucky flew helicopters with Jeff at Yuma Search and Rescue and is also now retired from the Marines and living in Tucson.  It meant a lot to have friends come out and help us bring our dream into a reality.

Nancy and Lucky team up for some needling

After the walls are up and stitched together the next step is putting the box beams on top of them.  These beams may be stuffed full of straw but they are not light.  They are made out of 2" x 6"s with 2" x 6" spacers nailed on the inside and plywood nailed on the top and bottom.  Did we mention that they are also up to about 16' long?  Tom's scaffolding was put to good use when they were getting the beams in place.

Tom and Luis inspecting the first box beam to be placed on the eastern casita wall

With no pop-up tent for shade we were glad to have the northern walls on the house completed so we could have a shaded place to eat lunch out of the sun as the temperature was just as hot as the previous day.

The Supervisor 

The next step in stabilizing / strengthening the walls was to thread bamboo under the baling twine every two feet along both the interior and exterior sides of the walls.  Luis cut all the bamboo stalks to 90".  This was done to help level the walls after the bales are compressed.  There were holes pre-drilled in the redwood frames under the bales and there will be holes drilled in the bottom of the box beams which the bottoms and tops of the bamboo stalks will fit into.

Tom threading the bamboo

Bamboo inserted vertically under the baling twine

At the end of day two we were able to get all but one short wall completely stacked.  We were ready for the weekend!

A selfie of us in the living room

The end of Day 2 summary

After taking the weekend and Monday off, Jeff was back at it with Tom, Luis and Spencer.  High winds were forecasted to begin around 2:00 AM Tuesday morning so after the dust devil incident on Thursday, Jeff didn't sleep very well and Tom showed up with a big load of lumber to make sure we had all the walls sufficiently braced.  All of our fears were for not as the walls were still up and in place when were arrived on Tuesday morning.  The next two days were spent getting the remaining wall built, all the bamboo stalks installed and the box beams put in place and attached to each other at the corners.  And wouldn't you know it the temperature didn't drop.  In fact it soared to over  105 F (40.5 C)!

Box beam in place on top of the wall just prior to the top piece of plywood being nailed on 


And before we knew it our four days of stacking, needling, bamboo weaving and box beam placing was complete and we have WALLS!

Southeast corner and south side of the house.  The big gap is where our wall of windows will go

The western end of the house with the narrow bathroom window and large shower window

The northwest corner of the house

The southwest corner of the casita with the rammed earth wall

The view when you come through the front door of the house

A wrap up of the progress over the last few days

Next up will be prep work for the pouring of the concrete for the porch and garage, the excavation for the septic system, the threading of the allthread through the box beams, and then the compression of the bales.  Stay tuned!