[GSBN] your comments on gsbn for mark

[Mark Piepkorn]

More follow-up from James on his project. I think this is the last of 
it. He also sent some photos; I put them on a temporary page at
http://potkettleblack.com/TEMPORARY/sdsb/

At 08:44 AM 6/21/2009, jamesehaze at yahoo.com wrote:
>Mark,
>
>         I look forward to your thoughts on this project: of course 
> its all a learning experience. As a young boy of eleven I rode on 
> the family baler, and signaled frantically when it failed to knot 
> the twine every 5th bale or so. Today that would be child abuse.... 
> but you can inform me when I've failed to cinch the bale.
>
>         On the day of the pour we debated the slump for the 
> concrete: I was all for a stiff mix with a slump of 2 or less and 
> my friend said make it soupy. I was concerned that the mud would 
> ooze past the forms. Turns out my friend was right. The straw 
> sucked enough moisture out of the mix that we did get two column 
> failures. They plugged up at the top and didn't fill. Moral of the 
> story... listen to your friends.
>
>         The forms stripped easily because we screwed every thing 
> together, (and of course reused the screws). We placed wires every 
> foot or so to hang the wire we'd salvaged from the farmer at 
> auction: total cost for that was five dollars. Next we quilted the 
> bales every row: every foot or so. The bales beat into position 
> very easily and I was able to satisfy my German sensibility for 
> straightness of the wall without too much of a fight.
>
>         The columns defined individual panels for the stucco work, 
> with the top plate and the columns extending out 1 1/2 inches 
> beyond the plane of the bales. This meant no cold joints. It also 
> broke the stucco work down into manageable tasks. Not being 25 
> anymore I had no desire to put in 12 hour days of slinging mud.
>
>        Most importantly the column edges have become control joints 
> and so far my panels have shown no evidence of cracking. By the 
> time the finish coat is applied the framework will be flush and the 
> rooms will have nice flat walls. I plan on tiling the columns on 
> the inside and applying some of our natural Minnekata red limestone 
> to the exterior columns.
>
>         One of the changes I plan to implement in the next building 
> is to pour the columns at least a foot away from all openings. This 
> will eliminate straw breakout and allow for those ever so pleasing 
> rounded window and door opening. I figure we poured probably a 
> dozen too many columns. Also the corners will be freed of the 
> columns and the uprights pulled in by a foot so the exterior 
> corners can be rounded and notching of the corners eliminated.
>
>         Another feature that the concrete bond beam made possible 
> was to bale the gable ends. Thirty years of framing has made me 
> want to eliminate as much hammering and sawing as possible... just 
> a personal preference... The bales stacked up past the rafters and 
> I stuccoed the top surface before the roof sheeting went on. It 
> would take at least an F3 storm to tear off that roof and there are 
> nice large overhangs with the framing extending well over the gable bales.
>
>         Half of the building was an insulation experiment: I spaced 
> the 14 inch TJIs of the cut roof at bale width and placed OSB on 
> the underside of the rafters and the bales slipped right in.  Gave 
> the bale tops a light stucco coat and then the OSB on the roof 
> deck. The ceiling will be finished with tongue and groove 
> wainscoting for that western mountain feel. Since I acquired the 
> TJIs at auction I had two sizes and the 11 inch TJIs got ten inches 
> of fiberglass insulation. The bale insulation definitely 
> outperformed the fiberglass. When it snowed the bale side of the 
> same room retained the snow with no melting while the fiberglass 
> side was snow free after 3 days .
>
>         As for the need for the 3,000 sq ft house... well I'm a 
> part time artist and musician, so when you include a stained glass 
> studio, some rock polishing space and a place for the friends to 
> play, the space gets used up fast. I have 5 acres, the place will 
> use minimal resources and I won't have to burn gas going to a 
> rented studio space in town. That's my rationalization anyhow... 
> and I'm sticking to it.
>
>         As for using nice big timbers and lots of wood... been 
> there done that and, as an artist, reserve the right to use my 
> medium of  choice. I've built four log homes and I know there is a 
> lot of embedded energy in cutting down the trees, hauling them to 
> the site, setting them in place with human carbon usage, etc.  And 
> then they are in the way inside the house rather then being 
> integrated into the wall... I like my trees in the forest... but to 
> each his own... the main thing is... what does it cost to heat, 
> cool, and maintain the house over its 100 plus years of life?
>
>         We will debate that for a long time to come, hopefully in 
> the comfort of a thickwalled, durable and human-friendly habitat. I 
> look forward to your critique of the system and stand ready to 
> modify with better ideas and also to carry on the good fight.
>
>       Once again I appreciate this discussion, I really tend toward 
> the doing end of things and am forced to verbalize ideas only with 
> some degree of prodding. 5 weeks of building and 10 minutes of 
> writing and drawing. I do want to summarize what I consider to be 
> significant points of this project.
>
>         The moving of the stemwall insulation to the inside of the 
> concrete eliminated the degrading of the foam over time and makes 
> for a cleaner installation and can greatly reduce the concrete 
> quantity, while giving the building a much higher toe up.
>
>         The re-usable nature of the form work greatly extends the 
> utility of the wood usage, and the fact that it can be performed by 
> the average builder is a plus.
>
>         The cost per square for of the enclosed shell at this point 
> is 30 dollars per sq.ft. inclusive of the labor @ 20/hr.
>
>         The top plate at this point has shown minimal deflection at 
> this point. And the design, after some study should be amenable to 
> code acceptance.
>
>         The design is, of course, still in its formative stages and 
> undergoing modifications for greater efficiency of materials and labor.
>
>         The stability of double columns and the integrated bond 
> beam lends itself to a host of new creative expressions.
>
>         The breaking down of the stucco task into manageble wall 
> panels greatly helps the self builder.
>
>         The ellimination of cold joints and the inherent design of 
> control joints will greatly eliminate water infilltration.
>
>         Incoproration of bales into the cut roof could greatly 
> elimate the usage of carconogenic and undesirable fiberglass.
>
>         The ease of using bales on the gable ends eliminates the 
> need for framing and enhances the efficiency of the overall building.


>At 10:20 PM 6/19/2009, jamesehaze at yahoo.com wrote:
>>Hello Mark,
>>
>>         Thank you for the opportunity to correct the skimpy 
>> newspaper article. I would like to first of all make it clear that 
>> I am not an amateur builder. For 30-plus years I have been in all 
>> types of construction: residential and commercial as well as some 
>> bridge building experience, including extensive supervisory 
>> positions. I ran this building idea by George Vlastos, a 
>> registered architect in Casper Wyoming before executing the plan.
>>
>>         A little history:
>>
>>         I assisted my neighbor in the construction of his straw 
>> bale place in the Pine Shadows (Hot Springs, SD) subdivision. This 
>> subdivision burned extensively in the Alabaugh Canyon wildfire on 
>> 07-07-07, entirely destroying my conventionally built frame home & 
>> all my possessions. My neighbor's place, which was a timber framed 
>> structure, was destroyed as well. He didn't seal the tops of his 
>> bales and that caused significant smoldering from the top down: 
>> the windows melted out and the RBA collasped after the internal 
>> framework ignited.
>>
>>         While helping him on his place I noticed extensive cracks 
>> developing, and it occurred to me that the stucco lacked control 
>> joints. My subsequent investigation found that a great deal if not 
>> all strawbale homes with long unbroken walls developed these 
>> unsightly and water permeable cracks in them and that led to my 
>> inquiry into whether I could engineer these problems out. After at 
>> least a year of thinking, reading and designing, I decided to 
>> build a prototype, as it were. Sometimes you figure things out 
>> best by just doing it.
>>
>>         My first step was to give the bales a significant toe up. 
>> The foundation of my previous structure was an intact 6 inch 
>> poured wall. I placed a 3 inch row of closed cell foam along each 
>> side of this wall for insulation and poured 4 inches of new 
>> concrete on each side and 2 inches over the top, which gave me an 
>> 8 inch high and 18 inch wide toe up over the footprint of my old 
>> building. On the newly poured section I just used a foam core 
>> center and 4 inches of stemwall on each side and 1 inch over the 
>> top, to minimize both concrete usage and cold conductivity.
>>
>>         I then sank #6 rebar in the wet footer 8 ft tall and no 
>> more than 12 feet apart 3 inches in from the edge on both the 
>> inside and outside edges, of the building, which made for external 
>> pinning. I hated the internal pin system after spearing my chest 
>> at a Colorado seminar and it also seemed that sometimes the bales 
>> shifted too easily despite the pins.
>>
>>         At this point I had forty 8 ft  lengths of rebar standing 
>> around the perimeter of my building with a mate for each one 
>> inside and out. As the building progressed I realized this was 
>> overkill and I didn't need ALL that rebar to act as a trimmer and 
>> kingstud arrangement... but at least I know that southfacing 
>> window wall will never fail. I also realized the corner posts 
>> could be brought in at least a foot and eliminate some complicated 
>> notching. At no time were the bale ends ever notched... not sure 
>> where that idea came from.
>>
>>         After this the stacking began. When we reached the rebar 
>> we marked the bales and cinched the strings together with a rebar 
>> twist tie to get them away from the notching operation. An 
>> electric chainsaw with no oil, and a 4 to 5 inch deep by 6 inch 
>> wide notch was made on either the inside or the outside of the 
>> bales, where each column would be. We got pretty good and fast at 
>> this after the first dozen or so! This left 6 to 8 inches of straw 
>> in the middle at each column location, to limit the cold conductivity.
>>
>>         As we stacked the bales we placed a form of two 2x4s with 
>> a 13 inch 3/4 plywood piece screwed together over the notch and 
>> rebar, after we gave the channel one last cleaning out with the 
>> chainsaw. This allowed us to straighten the walls for plumb as we 
>> went. We drilled 6 small holes in the forms from top to bottom and 
>> wire tied the inside and outside form together using a small screw 
>> as an anchor for the wire ties. This was both inexpensive and 
>> effective: we had no forms break out and the bales themselves were 
>> 3 sides of each column with an unbroken tie-in between bale and concrete.
>>
>>         At the top I cleated a 2x4 to 2x10s with the 2x4 down and 
>> toward the bales and used the wire tie system to hold it tight. 
>> This meant that the concrete superstructure would be 1 1/2 inches 
>> out from the plane of the bales and of course like any good bridge 
>> builder I tied all of the rebar together at this point. The 
>> thickness of the top bond beam averages 4 inches and with some 
>> planning could be designed as a honeycomb to eliminate at least a 
>> yard or two of concrete.
>>
>>         Next was the pump truck, a couple concrete vibrators and 
>> four good friends. Three hours and only 8 yards of concrete later 
>> I had compressed bale walls, that shed water, and a carpenters 
>> dream of a bond beam on which to set trusses, and a cut roof with 
>> bales in a tji framework. My total concrete cost was under $2,000, 
>> including the rebar.
>>
>>         I've already identified more time and cost savings. A 
>> really cool thing is that the concrete bond beam holds up the 
>> bales from the top... less compression as time goes on, and I 
>> don't have that pesky timber frame in my way.
>>
>>         Tommorrow I will explain how this really makes the stucco 
>> work so much better... and I will gladly forward pictures... but 
>> for now... thanks for allowing me to share... after all we all 
>> hate fiberglass don't we?
>>
>>James Hay Hot Springs South Dakota    jamesehaze at yahoo.com
>
>
>At 10:35 PM 6/19/2009, james hay wrote:
>>mark this is probably too much info but it does chronicle the whole 
>>stacking phase with rebar placement and form detail. you can 
>>download individual pics if you like....james
>>
>>You are invited to view Ronnie's photo album: Bale Out
>>
>>Bale Out
>>Aug 31, 2008
>>by Ronnie
>>The Project in Hot Springs
>>View Album
>>Play slideshow
>>If you are having problems viewing this email, copy and paste the 
>>following into your browser:
>>http://picasaweb.google.com/ronnie.hendershott/BaleOut