Hi Everyone.
Our second truckload of plasterer’s sand arrived this morning, meaning that we’ve already used 20 cubic metres of sand, and we’re well over half-way through the second coat of render. The sand that we use for our render is sold by a Bendigo firm called Epsom Sand and Soil, and has been sold for years to hard plasterers and renderers. It’s a fairly ‘lean’ sand, meaning that it doesn’t have a great deal of ‘fat’ or clay in it. This means that it can be put on the wall fairly thick, and doesn’t shrink and crack. If we were to use a ‘fatty’ sand like brickies sand, each layer of render would have to be applied quite thin, to avoid excessive cracking.
If you’re planning on rendering your strawbale home yourself, find your nearest solid plasterer, and ask them where their sand comes from. In all likelihood, this will be ideal sand for thick rendering of strawbale walls. It costs about $1400 to get a truck and trailer full of sand, which is a touch over 20 cubic metres, to Mansfield, but it’s worth every cent to know that we have the right sand for the job. We have the added complication of needing the sand to behave in such a way that it’s ‘pumpable’ in a pressure vessel type render pump, but if a strawbale builder is rendering their house by hand, then a good quality local sand can probably be sourced to do a perfectly adequate job. Keeping an eye on the shrinkage of the render is one of the main keys to doing a top quality job.
Unfortunately we don’t have the photo that was to accompany this blog which was to show you the approximate size of a load of sand and how far that would get you but perhaps that one can wait until next week. Life is very busy…..
See you next week, Mark
