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re: natural building colloquium east (update)
11 may 2000
drrobtom wrote:
>imagine if you will you, your family and friends stomping on wet clay mixed
>with ny states finest straw and sand, can you feel it, the cool earth oozing
>between your toes? or perhaps stacking large "fuzzy straw bricks" in a
>circular pattern to dizzying heights than capping that structure with a
>bamboo truss roof covered with thatch. hard to imagine? sound crazy?
yes, in new york... cost of labor aside, won't it rot right away?
>want to play and learn than plan to join us at the natural building
>colloquium-east 2000/"building with spirit".
maybe. when is it?
we misc.ruralites have been wondering lately about strawbale walls...
wrote:
>i just saw a post wherein one fellow suggested using bales of hay/straw
>as concrete forms... if you were building an aboveground structure,
>how thick would the outside walls of bales around the building have
>to be, in order to support the weight of the concrete that goes into
>the walls and the roof of the structure?
an 8' wall full of 150 pound per cubic foot wet concrete exerts
1200 pounds per square foot of force at the bottom, right? so each
square foot of wall needs about 1200 pounds of strawbales near the
bottom, if the coefficient of friction between the strawbales and the
ground is 1 (the wall might still bulge a bit.) that's about 40 30
pound bales for each linear foot of perimeter, at the bottom of the
wall, extending more than 100' outwards from the wall, on both sides!
it seems more interesting to put the bales inside the wall and use
plywood slip forms with wire ties. maybe lay some 2"x4" welded wire
fence over the bales in a u-shape. that's a more economical use of
concrete, and it makes better use of its strength. the smaller amount
might be mixed up and placed by the bagful. the bales can provide
excellent insulation, if there's not much concrete bridging the wall
from one face to the other. the strawbales or haybales (cheap mushroom
hay, in this case?) would stay inside...
nick
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