[GSBN] Floods in Queensland, Australia

[Lars Keller]

Dear Chris,

I have no experience equalling this.

I have 2 experiences with water:

- water seeking down through very localised areas.
Then what happens always is that the water follows the "flakes" within the
bale. And moves  straight down. Creating a black, bad line that can be as
thin as a few centimeters, stretching from the leaking point to where the
water can run out in the bottom.
What we have managed to do when we have found such a place very early on is
drilling holes through the plaster to the wall, from both sides, and that
way created a draft, which has dried it up so we didnt have to do more.

What is probably more relevant is the following:
- a workshop where the bales had been put straight on a concrete footer
(bad), with a piece of tar-paper in-between the footer and the wall (ok),
but the tar-paper had been folded up, app. 200mm on each side, creating a
huge water-catchment device (BAD), and the house had no eaves for a long
time (BAD), located in very windy and rainy Denmark, and no plaster (BAD).
The result was that the bottom 200mm went black and slimy. Absolutely
utterly useless. And from exactly 200mm and up everything was fine.
There was earthen plaster on the inside.

What we did was the following:
we took one bale out at a time and replaced it. As it was the bottom bale
and it was plastered on the inside it had been compressed a fair bit, so it
was hard to get the new one in place. We did this by sliding it in between
to sheets of aluminium with handles on. And then two persons on their backs
kicking it in. The earthen plaster on the inside flexed and shook but didnot
crack. The length of the wall app. 40 meters.

All the best,
Lars
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