Happy New Year!!!
It looks like Professional Strawbale has a pretty busy year coming up – we’ve had a staggering amount of interest and enquiries over the previous twelve months, and I know plenty of those enquiries will be turning into exciting jobs this year so I can pass on more strawbaling info to you.
We’ve just finished a very little job in a spot called Walmer – it’s about half way between Ravenswood and Maldon, about 20 km southish of Bendigo. (It’s always fantastic to get work close to home).
The job was only a single wall, about 8 and a half metres long and 2.4 metres high, in a pretty unique and attractive building clad in a composite of strawbale, corrugated iron and western red cedar weatherboards.
The builder, a fella from Barkers Creek, just outside Castlemaine, was given a pretty crook frame design, but has made a pretty good job of it.
As you can see from the diagram, the posts and beam carrying the roof are positioned towards the inside surface of the wall. Because the owner wanted a nice deep window reveal on the inside, the windows themselves had to be situated at the outside of the wall. The solution that George came up with was to build a box out of melamine coated particle board, which he then screwed to the 50mm x 50mm RHS posts supporting the beam and rafters. The window was then fitted inside the box so that it protruded about 20 or 30mm from the outside surface of the render. What this arrangement means is that the window and its surrounding box aren’t supported by anything underneath it – it’s relying solely on the rigidity of the box to hold it in place. The long centre window was already sagging to the point where it couldn’t be opened and closed properly, so I suggested we cut a groove in the bales to squeeze a pine stud under the window – this straightened it out to its proper shape.
The architect, as well as recommending a dodgy frame set-up, only allowed 20mm for render – this is woefully inadequate. The frame set-up has also meant that in between the plaster sheet on the ceiling and the surface of the render, there’s a 250mm deep chunk of laminated timber and the outside of the render stop (about 45mm deep) to cover. You are not going to cover that up with a length of plaster cornice!!!
Anyway, there are a few more issues, but I will save them for next week.
Cheerio!
Frame set up at Walmer
