Natural Walls - The Remix Edition

Time for a barn-raising!  The last two insulated wall systems for our barn are straw-bale walls.  The bales are stacked in a running bond, secured to our frame with strapping and stakes, and whatever holes and cracks are created between bales are stuffed with light straw clay knot to make these walls as tight as possible.

You can see the black strapping securing the corner bales to the timber frame and exterior framework.  Corners are notorious for blow-out, so this detail is especially important.

Peek-a-boo!  I am working on the inside of the barn stuffing cracks in the wall with a cob mixture (sand, clay, straw, little bit of water) to prevent any thermal breaks.

Look at this beautifully plastered wall!  After stacking the bales and stuffing all the cracks tightly, our bales were well prepped to receive their clay plaster coating.  We first sprayed down the entire bale wall with a super fine clay slip to give our plaster coat a little something extra to stick too.  The plaster is made up of clay, water, sand, and straw, and applied by hand to the entire wall in a slap and smear technique.  

In summary, natural wall systems are fairly similar to mexican food.  Same ingredients, change the proportions, and the name of the dish/wall is different.  You can see that the light straw clay wall, he cob mixture, the straw bale wall, and even the plaster are all derived from the same ingredients....que bueno!