Straw Light Clay Wrap up

We had another small work party in early November that got us to around 85% complete. Over the latter half of November we knocked out lots of detail work and the bottle walls.

Here’s a video recap:

And here are some stills with more details:

Ferrying straw bales to the worksite

Mixing the slip. 

Adding dirt to the slip

I determined that the bulk dirt we were getting had about 15% clay content. To bump up the clay content of the slip I added a couple of bags of powdered clay to each barrel of slip to get the total clay content to around 25%. Adding the powdered clay was a touch dusty hence the respirator.

Currell and Cameron working on the bathroom walls. The goal of third and final work party was to finish the walls of the bathroom and the office/guest bedroom.

Currell traveled in from Georgia to help out for a few days.

Jean applying her well calibrated foot to apply an even 30 PSI of pressure to the straw light clay

Looking sharp for the ever watchful site foreman

Henry assists in putting up the form work.

Building up the bottle wall. The forms worked extremely well keeping the bottles in place while we added cob.

For the bottle wall we used cob instead of straw light clay. This is a particularly strawy bit of cob

Bringing up cob.

Finishing the middle bottle wall. Jean is finishing a section of wall that had been obstructed by scaffolding.