The Strawdio

Laying the tiles

Ben Dwyer — Tue, 06 Jun 2023 22:05:00 +0000

Now the battens are done it was time to lay the tiles. This was a two stage process – firstly the tiles were loaded onto the roof to spread the weight evenly. Then the tiles were laid on the battens. The first row of tiles needed to be half size and I didn’t have enough, so I made them by cutting concrete tiles with a mitre saw – not much fun!

The rest of the laying was very fun – its immensly satisfying work. Every fifth row is nailed, so those ones are a bit slower, but the rest of the tiles go on really fast. Once they were on it really transformed the building and made it look like a proper structure. Because the tiles were reclaimed it even looked quite old!

checking how much the roof moved when the tiles were added

as the tiles were added to the roof it began to drop

i left a space above the door and window posts to account for the roof dropping

Roof battens

Ben Dwyer — Wed, 03 May 2023 23:44:00 +0000

Fixing the roof battens was lovely work. Once I realised that the gap between the battens was the same as the width of the battens it was so easy to get everything laid out. The only challenge was trying to make sure that the nails made it into the rafter. Once you got a few in you could just follow the lines up. Thanks to those who helped.

Inside…

Ben Dwyer — Tue, 02 May 2023 23:37:00 +0000

free pallets – this wood was perfect for the gap between the roof and the walls

the beginning of the mezzanine

Dropping The Roof

Ben Dwyer — Fri, 21 Apr 2023 09:27:14 +0000

The first part of this video shows me trying to get the walls straight and stuffing straw in the gaps between the bales. The second part shows me removing the supports for the roof so that it sits on the bales.

I wasn’t quite sure how to drop the roof. It felt like taking off the supports that held it out would be a very dangerous and risky thing to do with a good chance of disaster.

However the straw was so tightly packed beneath the roof plate that when I took of the supports it hardly dropped at all initially and then gradually sunk down but only really by a couple of centimeters.

All of that is to say that these videos are very dull in the end!

Building The Walls

Ben Dwyer — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 22:03:07 +0000

Dressing a bale

Ben Dwyer — Sun, 16 Apr 2023 19:44:13 +0000

Here’s a short video about how to prepare (or dress) a bale ready to be used in a straw bale building:

Getting the bales

Ben Dwyer — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 10:13:26 +0000

This was a good day

Bale Compression Test

Ben Dwyer — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 23:51:59 +0000

The gap between the floor and the roof is slightly too small for 6 bales. This is deliberate, so that it won’t be necessary to drop the roof onto the bales – the roof should already be sitting on the bales when I remove the supports.

I wanted to be sure I could compress the bales enough so that they would fit in the gap, so I did a test:

It worked!

Making The Wall Plate

Ben Dwyer — Fri, 03 Feb 2023 20:33:45 +0000

Boarding The Roof Plate

Ben Dwyer — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 15:22:00 +0000