What an amazing couple months it's been since my last entry. The ag building has become not only our crowning achievement but also the building that seems like it will never get finished! It's very frustrating to hold a full time job and build something like this on the side. Mainly because you lose momentum and can't focus a long period of time on it. But nonetheless, everytime we make progress on it, and you are able to see what is accomplished it all becomes worth it. What a difference a wall makes :)

So we left off with the big door being installed, which is now how everyone in the area identifies our property. Seems everyone has taken a liking to our door. I think just the fact that there is something that looks hand made causes people to look again and notice it. These days when you see new buildings go up, everything seems to come out of a factory.

Our next step was to get the toe-up (sill plates) ready for the bales. In order to make sure the bales never get wet, particularly when things spill on the floor, they are raised up on the 2x6/2x4 bottom plate. In between the wood we put some pea gravel which creates a capillary break between the bales and the floor. This in turn keeps any moisture from wicking into the bales from the slab.



After the pea gravel was put in we nailed some 20D nails in every 4-6" in order to keep the botttom course of bales from moving side to side. No picture of this here, check the Ag Building area.

Next, in order to create a separation from the bales and the attic space/roof we hung some 18" wide drywall to the bottom chord of the trusses. This also creates a firestop between the roof and the walls not to mention a nice closed in area where we can stuff straw flake to get the wall nice and tight.





The 2x4 you see in the picture above is nailed to the trusses as well in order to provide an interior location to staple the Welded Wire Mesh onto after the bale walls are up. The wire mesh is used in this building to help balance our lateral loads (to provide earthquake and wind resistance). Some straw buildings use steel "X" bracing, and others, Hardy Frame Panels. We plan on using hardy frames in the main house because we want to use an Earth Plaster instead of a Cement Based Stucco plaster we'll be using on the Ag Building.

Next, we drilled 3 vent holes with a paddle bit in a drill to provide much needed ventilation to the building's roof. This needed to be done before the walls were done so that we would be able to get in there and staple the hardware cloth mesh used to keep birds out.



On to the fun stuff, we framed in the side door which we bought as a defect door for 8 bucks. Renee painted it a nice red and I hung the door inside the box column door buck. Hanging dorrs manually I realized was very hard to get perfect. Then we ran some 2x4 scrap as door moulding on the outside and stained it with Penofin oil.



Next, Alfred and Stephen built out a light window frame with doubled 2x6's. We covered the inside with 15# tar paper to make sure that if water did seep in there it would seep out over the walls and not on top of them. We got this Marvin 6040 Insulated vinyl window from a guy in Redding who couldnt use them. Got them for about $75.00 each. They run retail for $250 so we got a great deal. We don't really like the way the vinyl windows look so we'll be using Sierra Pacific Wood windows in the main house.



Next we schedule a bale party for our family on Easter weekend and Stephen's Parents and Renee's Mom came out with Stephen's sister to put the bales in. We had our bales in storage for a long time, as you can see under the blue tarp and in the blue storage container. They were super dry! Only the bottom ones under the tarp were unusable, but we had plenty.

It was a fun day seeing our family get really into the bales. Everyone got most excited when making custom bales with these hand made bale needles we got from Marcus Hardwick out of Santa Rosa. The challenge was getting the new bales tied really tight. We had to make custom bales in order to do the running bond. We learned the tieing technique from a CASBA workshop we went to a while back. Those workshops do actually teach you stuff you need to know.



Here's Renee and her mom working on a custom bale below.



Everyone had their own technique too! My Dad was particular good at coming up with a "system" for getting the needle level in in the right place each time. :)

Here is a picture of our first 2 bales laid in.



We needed to notch the top bales to accommodate the width of the glu-lam beam as well as a couple 2x4 nailers we had to put in for the Welded wire mesh. We used an Angle Grinder with a Lancelot Wheel (chainsaw blade) to do most of the notching. We also used a Chain Saw to do the longer cuts. Here is a picture of a custom bale with a notch cut out.



And here is a picture of the angle grinder with the lancelot blade. These things are dangerous!



It took us about 3 4hr. days to get all the bales in. The family stayed 2 days and we got about 70% of it done. We also had to stuff flake in the tops of the walls later on. Here are some pics of the walls in progress and some finished walls.







And finally the finished fully baled in Ag Building. Once they were in, it was an amazing tranformation into an actual shelter. Its a unique feeling.



We have spent the last couple weeks trying to find time to work on trimming the bales. You have to trim them to get rid of all the loose flake and even out the walls. Renee has created a nice straw/clay mixture which we are using from the land to patch any uneven areas and indentations in the walls. We just used some clay from the ground which was left to soak in water overnight. Then mixed in some fine straw to form a good patching consistency.

After all the exterior and interior walls are trimmed and patched we will install the Welded Wire Mesh, which you can see in the above photo in rolls. Hopefully we will be ready to stucco the building within the next 2 weeks!