Work Party

This weekend there is a work party here. Twenty some people came up, a lot from the Bay Area, quite a few from other parts of the US, to help out, and camp and have fun. A lot of work was done on Strawberry House, as well as a pumphouse some of the apprentices are building for a special project, there was also gardening and work on a leaking roof on an older house. I took tons of photos of work on Strawberry House and the pumphouse.

I will start with the slip-straw wall photos. The first two things we did was mix up slip straw, this time tossing it with our hands, and put up forms to pack it into. We then put it into the forms, making sure to get it into the corners, and tamped it down, but not too much, nor too little. We worked on it both before and after lunch, and got almost done, we still need to add more above the windows. We packed it below the window then added the window still when we got high enough. Since this side of the house, the west side, is going to be the kitchen we also added pipes through the wall to be used for water.














The pumphouse is a cool small six sided building, of which we worked on three walls today. Steph, Steve, and Anastasia had already done a lot of work digging foundations holes, installing posts and roof beams, and beautiful found pieces of wood to hold the walls between the poles. The wall design does not go to the ground nor the roof, allowing water to flow as needed below and the submersible pump to be pulled through above the walls if need be. So they attached pieces of wood for the bottom and top of where the infill forming the solid walls would stop and start.

We used two different techniques to infill the walls. They are clay wattle and wattle and daub. Both involve weaving in and out between uprights. In the case of wattle and daub willow and other pretty flexible sticks were woven between small uprights, then daub, a clay straw mixture, is applied over that wattle. In this case a truth window, a place where the outer layer is not applied so people can later see what is underneath, is artistically placed in the wall.



























































Clay wattle is taking a small handful of long straw and rolling it in clay slip to coat it then using that braid (not really a braid but we called them that) to weave in and out between uprights.



















































Back at Strawberry House, after lunch we added the last bale to the sections of strawbale wall getting done now. It was actually only a partial bale. First the side what was going to get plastered was dipped in a clay slip so the plaster would stick to it better, then it was hoisted into place. (It in fact was a little too long so had to get cut again then put back into place.) After that the pins on the outside of the bales, both front and back, could get tied in using baling twine, which had been layed between the bales when they were put in place, to hold the wall together.



















The area behind the highest bales had to get filled in since the boards holding the posts together at the top were blocking the top row of strawbales from being full width. The bales could have been cut in an L shape to fill that space instead of simply being made less wide but it was decided that filling with straw coated in a heavier slip would be easier.























Also in the afternoon people worked on plastering the strawbale wall. First plaster, well mixed clay and chopped straw, is pressed into the wall (but not pounded, which jiggles it and makes it less securely in place), then it is made smooth, in part with a board being pushed back and forth over it. In places not done when we quit for dinner, which will dry before we get back to work on them, holes were poked with fingers to make a rough surface onto which plaster will bind more strongly.























And on the walk back to dinner I couldn't help but take a photo of this beautiful sunflower.