SB: Re: Hybrid question

[Dion Hollenbeck <hollen@woodsprite.com>]

>> First Last writes:

FL> If any of you feel strongly whether this idea is good or bad, I'd
FL> sure appreciate reading your thoughts.

FL> 1.  Bale walls go up first.
FL> 2.  Bale walls get super compressed, height measured.
FL> 3.  Vertical notches for load-bearing posts get cut in bales, top
FL> to bottom.
FL> 4.  Posts, exactly the same height as the super compressed wall,
FL> are fit into the wall.
FL> 5.  Roof trusses are fastened to the posts.

If you are going to use the extra wood for a non-loadbearing SB
structure, IMHO, you are building the building backwards as you
describe above.  You are also foregoing some of the advantages to
building a post and beam.

The LARGE advantage to building a post and beam infill SB structure is
that you can put up the roof first and then bring the bales in under
the roof and if you get weather of any kind. you can hang tarps from
the perimeter and be totally protected.

You do have a point about getting the bale walls to exactly fit under
the beam, but done correctly, there is no problem at all, and you can
achieve a small amount of compression, not much of which is really
needed.  In addition, if you stack the bales AFTER putting up the
posts, at every intersection with the posts, you can tie the bales to
the posts and make the wall even more sturdy until you get the stucco
or whatever on.  With a post and beam, there is no need whatsoever for
compression and I believe you are just making yourself a lot of extra
work. 

The trick to getting the walls the right height is as follows.
Measure the height of your bales.  Multiply that by the number of
courses minus one, and then add the width of one bale to that, as the
top course of bales is laid on edge, not flat like all the bottom
courses.  Make the height of your posts plus the depth of the beam on
top that measurement.  Ignore the 2" thickness of your toe-up, or if
you are for some reason using a thicker toe-up, subtract two inches
from the top of the height.  When you get to the top course, in order
to clear the beam, you will have to turn a bale on its edge anyway.
And with the 4" thick beams I used, the 18" wide bale turned on edge
was 14" plus the beam made up the 18" width of the other bales.  You
will now have a 4" gap below the beam on the outside of the wall, but
this is easily filled with any kind of insulation.  Since you
subtracted 2" from the height of your post, your top course of bales
turned on edge is now 2" too big.  Or if you have a wavy wall, in some
places, it will be maybe just right.  This gives you 2" of slop that
you can easily trim from the edge of the bale.  When we went to do the
trimming, we did not have to do much at all.  The bales tilt up into
place and are only touching the roof joists, so there is not a huge
compression area per bale, at most 3 roof joists 2" wide each.  you
would not even have to carve the whole side of the bale as we did, but
you can just notch for each joist.  Pushing the bales in under the
roof joists can give a slight amount of compression, but as I
mentioned before, none is needed except enough to keep the bales in
place until they are stuccoed.  With this method, we did no pinning of
the bales whatsoever, except the imbalers embedded in the slab going
into the bottom of the first course.

I have some pictures on my web site that show the post and beam, but
unfortunately, no pictures of the actual detail I am talking about.  I
don't have enough time or storage space on my web site to have put in
all the details, however, I did take about 1100 detailed pictures of
the entire construction project and if you wanted to send me enough
money for the cost of a blank CD and postage, I would be happy to burn
you a copy of the pictures.  They will also show you the details of
how we attached each course of bales to every post and how we made
stiffeners that we put at 1/3 and 2/3 of the way up the wall.

As you will be able to see from the pictures on the web site, the
walls are extremely straight.  In fact, most people who did not see
the building go up do not believe that it is strawbale until they see
the truth window.

dion
-- 
Dion Hollenbeck  Email:  hollen@woodsprite.com
Home Page:       http://www.woodsprite.com
Brewing Page:    http://hbd.org/hollen

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