External walls all but completed

Apologies again for begin a bit late with this update. We will try to do it weekly, but some weekends and evenings we have just been a bit too tired to sit in front of the computer. Anyway, as you will see we are now making 3 new entries on the same day, but with 3 different topics.

First to the strawbale walls. We are moving along and are now done with the major baling work of the external walls. The only remaining work is now to put chicken wire on the inside and outside of the office, and then to give it a first coat of render. But we are getting a bit ahead of ourselves here. The last entry showed that we had finished the northern wall of the living room. After than we started the section that included the northern and western walls of the dining room, and then the western wall of the kitchen (well, actually the only strawbale wall of the kitchen). The progress for this section went something like this:

Geir building the kitchen wall. This corner was very tricky in that it is only about 45 degrees. As such we had to put a full bale and a short bale in place, then stitch with the baling twine and later fill the gap between the bales with parts of packed straw/bale biscuits (see illustration below).

Jodie having a little rest

Kitchen wall taking shape. This section did take some time to complete, partly due to what we said above, but also due to the ceiling joists (top of the picture above) and the need to cut grooves into the bales to fit between the joists.

Dining room wall completed and almost covered with first coat of render

Dining room seen from the east, looking west, before rendering on the inside.

Kitchen wall completed. Note that the wall under the windows is narrower than the rest of the walls. This is so that the bench can go closer to the window, making it easier to open the window for ventilation if needed.

Westerly wall outside kitchen and dining area. The pantry wall and office wall (on the right) is almost complete on this picture.

The next section was then completing the office - the last room of the house to be done. The western wall of the office was rather difficult in the that the roof is sloping downwards towards the most western point. This, combined with the rafters of the veranda and the ceiling joists inside the office, meant that it was impossible to use full bales at the top of the wall. As such, we had to fix the aviary and chicken wire together, to make a nice round tube, and then to stuff straw in from the side to make it really nice and tight. This worked, but was rather labour intensive.

Second course of bales in place. At the top of the picture the (left hand side) you can see the veranda rafters and how they rest on a perimeter beam . Inside the office you can also see the ceiling joists (a bit dark) and these are resting on another perimeter beam which is a bit higher up. As such, the problem with the bales described above.

Wall all but completed. The remaining part is to put on the chicken wire and to render the first coat.

Inside wall, showing the window to the south and the doorway to the west.

Again inside, showing the western wall, with the door to the veranda and the window.

Whilst Geir was building the last walls of the office, Jodie had time to start rendering the inside of the workshop. This has been left for a long time, but we now have to try to finish the inside of the workshop so that we can put up the work bench and have a good space for making the doors. The first coat completed on the long wall and just a few hours work is required on the short wall.

To finalise the building news, here are a couple of pictures that we took today from the northern end of the property:

And now some more animal news. Apart from the possum we have now discovered that we have Bandicoots on the property. We have not seen them so far, but they dig holes in the ground (see below) and we have it confirmed from a neighbour that this is a hole of a Bandicoot:

Wikipedia has a good description of them http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandicoot and here is also a small picture of what they look like:

And just to finish off this entry, here is the full moon we had the other day:

Any problems, please email webmaster. This page was last updated 24/07/2008