Category: Uncategorized

My good luck with the weather (it hadn’t rained since the bales were delivered) finally ran out this weekend, with some decent falls forecast and actually arriving. The stations surrounding me recorded 30-37mm since ~midnight last night, so there was some decent water coming down. I’ve been watching the forecasts pretty closely, so I knew this one was coming. Scooted out to the block after work on Friday and gave the shed a new wardrobe: Concentrated on the lower walls, relying on my eaves to…Continue Reading “A few more days’ bits and pieces” →

The last of the substantive baling for the shed was the hardest bit – over the top of the garage doors. I’d put together a plate to span the openings a while ago (and it’s been migrating its 6m-long self around the shed slab, constantly getting in my way ever since) and with the bale walls to the right height on both sides it was finally time to put it into place. Hoisting it into place wasn’t too difficult (with some persuasion and a bit…Continue Reading “Garage door top bales” →

Dropped past the block today after an extended dog walk to find I’d been a bit optimistic with how much wall would stand up on its own. The newest section of front wall had fallen outwards (judging by the bales distributed all over the carport) and the main wall had fallen inwards to rest against the bale stack inside. The wall itself was still in one piece – the front end of the top plate came around as the wall fell and the straps all…Continue Reading “Whoops” →

Another day of baling, attacking the last main section of shed wall between the wet area door and the main doors. Had another friend turn up for some baling fun, so we quickly taught her the notching and bale-cutting and got to it. This section of wall was pretty simple – no windows and only one corner – and the main slowdown seemed to be cutting the complicated bales around the big posts….which of course was the bit I was doing. Always letting the side…Continue Reading “More baling!” →

Relatively mild ambition for the day (compared to the weekend!) was to finish the rear wall of the shed – to the intermediate plate at least. Only had three courses of bales to go, but since the wall is ~10m long it was still a fair bit of baling and all above head height. Left dad baling while I put together the intermediate top plate in two halves. Then my interior designer Neve dropped past to admire the giant pile of straw, so there was…Continue Reading “Another day, another wall done (and lots of visitors)” →

My architects had, in all their spare time, gotten involved in an architecture course at UWA, and asked if they could bring some students around for some practical experience and….y’know….actually set foot on a building site, which is apparently a novel concept? 🙂 After a few delays and dramas along the way, this weekend turned out to be The One. I’d earmarked the front wall of the shed for this weekend, since it was straight (which reduces the amount of bale weirdness) but had four…Continue Reading “Workshop weekend” →

Short(ish) day on the walls, finishing off the wet area/dusty room to full height. Last time I’d gotten up above the level of the door frames, which let me start stitching together the different pieces and made the whole thing a lot more stable (the short section of wall between the two doors fell over after my first baling session, because I neglected to tie it to anything.) The frame over the dusty-room doors is fixed, but I’m experimenting with floating the plate over the…Continue Reading “More walls” →

Quite a random day, people-wise – a mate’s daughter has apparently been quite excited about the whole strawbale thing, so they came up for the day to generate loose straw and mutilate bales. Another mate and a couple of relatives came for visits as well, so I seemed to spend most of the day talking to people while everyone else worked. I put up a short section of wall (a rather annoying 1.4m long stand-alone wall, because I know how to make things easy for…Continue Reading “Wallssssssss” →

So a variety of blokes rocked up to the block this morning – apparently my bale farmer Steve has a lot of friends/relatives in Perth. Shortly after a rather large truck with 500 bales also rocked up, and we started the fun job of unstrapping, untying and transferring them to the shed. 90 minutes later my shed was looking a LOT smaller than it was yesterday: …and tomorrow we do it all again with the other 500. 🙂 I’d randomly acquired a big bulka bag…Continue Reading “Bale delivery, part 1” →

One of the final steps before baling – fixing the bottom plate to the slab, and filling the cavity with bluemetal to support the bales while allowing for drainage. The sparkies had been busy running cables from the switchboard to….just about everywhere, drilling holes in the top of the C-channel and then through the inside wall of the bottom plate – the way I’d set up the cross-pieces, there was very convenient cavities leading from the C-channel to each post, so they ran the cables…Continue Reading “Lots of rocks” →