Straw bale Building at the Factory
Day 1:
Today is a memorable day, after spending the last few months introducing the local planning authority to the totally alien concept of building in straw, and satisfying the fire safety officer that we met all his regulations, we were able to finally begin the straw build.
As the team gathered on site, in the cold morning mist, the enthusiasm was palatable, with everyone keen to get started. We cleared the site, moving the last of the 500 odd bales out of the way and setting up two time lapse cameras to record the build. Then after a health and safety, first aid and fire briefing the construction began in earnest.
The first job was to measure out the footprint of the cold store and make the wooden floor plate which will be attached to the floor as a base for the bales. Next we built the top plate which sits above the bales. After 7 hours of drilling sawing and hammering the room began to take shape.
Meanwhile a second team was tasked with admin and organisation, from buying biccies and milk to sourcing fsc timber, baling twine, trucker straps and white clay.
After a fantastic day, with great teamwork, we may well end tonight ahead of schedule. Our biggest lesson from the day is to never assume anything. We thought we had left the site last time with sufficient supplies of wood and nails but have ended up buying more, c’est la vie ! Enthusiasm is high, the team is working well despite the cold and tomorrow we hope to have some music to help us work.
Day 2:
Day two started with the team continuing to form the roof plate, it had to be well reinforced so we cut hundreds of pieces of wood and had to buy more supplies. The noise of the circular saw drowned out our newly installed music system.
As I write this just after 5.40 pm we all wonder where the day has gone… a blur of hammering sawing and drilling. We are all pleased with the work though, as the roof plate looks bulletproof, and our pile of sawdust will keep many hamsters happy !
In the middle of the afternoon we had more hazel delivered, by the nice chap from Dorset hurdles of Wimborne, just to the north of Poole. These will be used for the stubs that secure the straw, they will need to be sharpened by hand so the bales slide on easily. The hazel is grown using a sustainable coppice system with the young shoots trimmed every 3-4 years and allowed to grow back, a very traditional way to grow wood that avoids chopping down any trees.
Today we also managed to source another supply of bales in case we run out. The coldstore design has changed since it was first drawn up and now has 4 not 3 walls, so we need to ensure we have enough.
Day 3:
We seem to have spent 2 days building the framework up 6 inches and are now back down to floor level, but don’t worry its only for technical reasons ! Its actually good news as it means we have drilled the holes in the floor to secure the floor plate down. This seemingly easy job ended up taking some time as we had to mark up all the pieces before we removed them so that they (hopefully) will all go back easily in the same places they came from…its the biggest jigsaw I have ever seen! We managed to break a couple of drill bits but all the holes are done.
The site is filling up now, with 500 bales of straw, 200 sharpened hazel stubs and noggins galore! We have also had yet more wood delivered, along with some Leca clay balls and tools for tomorrow.
Jeff the Lush TV time lapse photographer has taken over 3000 photos so far and he says its a truly thrilling slide show.
Everything will change tomorrow though as another 20 volunteers from our Lush staff join us and we start to build the straw bale walls. A few Lushees who work in the shops have already arrived and its great that we have all worked as such a well oiled team despite the fact that there are new people every day.
Ruth has been trying to get a go on the shaving horse all day, as she likens it to sharpening giants pencils, but people have been queueing up to have a go, relishing the old fashioned whimsy. Another fun day in the strawbuild adventure.
Day 4:
Today we had volunteers from our factory on site. All the groundwork has been done so everyone can start putting the straw up! Here is Nick’s account.
Start of the day…
Wow what an awesome day. We started with 18 volunteers who normally work in the dairy production department of Lush here to help. None of them had ever been involved in any straw building before, but they were enthusiastic. Bee Rowan of Strawbuild our straw guru gave them a 25 minute teaching session, while Sion and Paulo finished the carpentry with consummate skill and speed, then we were off!
Working in teams of 2-4 we first hammered the hazel stubs into the insulated floorplate then placed the first course of bales onto them, starting at the corners and making sure they were a snug fit.
Where the bales were butted down they were notched by hand saw to house the timber fixing posts for the doorways. Working from the ends to the middle, some bales were cut to size by restringing the baling twine. Careful measurement resulted in a snug fit.
After the first course of bales, which took a while as so many hazel pins were needed, the second course went on sooo quickly that we all found ourselves sucked into the bale frenzy and it was up in no time.
Into the afternoon..
By late afternoon we had achieved four full courses of bales all the way around the 18m by 5.5m cold store, an amazing achievement for a group of people with no previous straw bale experience, and we’d even begun pinning them together using long sharpened hazel pins. At the end of day team bonding session we all agreed that it is very empowering to know that you can build a structure just using hand tools and teamwork!
Living compassion
Bee also invited us to help support the amazing work of a small zen buddhist group ‘Livingcompassion.org’ through their relationship with a slum community in Zambia called Kontalomba. Part of their work is a roof loan project where by folks can reroof their earth buildings and keep safe from collapse in the rainy season. It’s a nice natural building link to make between us… don’t go to cement Africa, stay with natural materials! Bee wants to send a photo of the volunteers on the Lush build, with a donation to help link the projects in a small way. Ruth will take pledges from any of you - thank you!
Bee will match whatever amount is raised from Lush volunteers and staff from her fee for this build, and Lush will match the total! So go for it… your contributions will be tripled, and hugely appreciated.
The Weekend:
The baling continued full steam over the weekend!
Strawbale weekend!
The crew worked really hard over the weekend, with many people giving up their free time to help us move the build forward.
Although the time lapse photos will not show an enormous difference we achieved a few key stages. with the wall finished to full height on Friday, we managed to get the top plate reassembled with some excellent teamwork moving huge lengths of ladder and some highly proficient fork lift truck maneuvering from Paul Biggs.
With the top plate secured together, it was attached to the bales by more 2m long hazel pins inserted from above. the ladder was then filled with straw and the lid jigsaw reassembled sealing the top plate.
The next task which requires precision mathematics combined with brute force is to level the top plate cranking down on the trucker straps (photo). this takes a while !
The teams is smaller now that the bales re in but the weather has improve so we are all in good spirits.
Week 2:
Day 8:
Monday was a tough day for the team, reduced to only 5 we discovered that the floor of the factory has a 3cm height difference from one end of our straw structure to the other. In order to correct for this and create a flat base for the mezzanine, we had a difficult time releveling the top of the straw.
The combination of lasers and huge hammers together with our brute force applied to ratchet straps eventually prevailed but it took a lot of time and we may well be behind schedule now.
That said by the end of the day we had achieved our goal, the structure is now stable and level and we have prevailed. Tomorrow will be an exciting day as we hope to start spraying the clay.
Day 9:
What a crazy day. because no one has ever tried to use straw in an industrial setting before, we could not meet the fire regulations in the UK (despite the existence of fire tests in the USA, Canada, Australia and Germany).
So to pass building regulations we have agreed to clad the structure in a gypsum sheeting called Fermacell, this is a fairly eco friendly product, that had to be delivered direct from Germany. Unfortunately the German factory had forklifts capable of lifting 2 tonne whilst we only have 1 tonne lifts, hence our first job this morning was to unload 4 tonnes of Fermacell by hand ! Go team straw.
The bulk of the day was spent fixing the vertical battens to the frame to support the Fermacell and take the weight of the compression on the bales. these had been covered in sticky grit to act as a key for the clay and it made them spiky so gloves were essential (see photo).
By mid afternoon they were all srewed on, after numerous screw buying sorties to Travis Perkins (who are luckily located) next door, and we were ready to release the ratchet straps. This was a very exciting moment as we popped them and hoped that the compression would hold; needless to say it did and we all cheered.
Next up we began to mix & spray the white clay onto the bales for extra fire resistance, this is a very messy slippery job and went on late into the night before a halt was called for an alternative valentines night pizza (see photo). The clay crew managed to cover over half the inside, an amazing effort.
Day 10:
Yesterday was really a day for finishing a few things off… Small details have improved the insulation of the building. For example where the ratchet strapping was lead under the floor plate we have now filled the gaps with clay ball insulation called leca. We also finished the detailing of straw round to she doors to minimise any air gaps, and and ticked off a fair few snagging jobs. This building should be super efficient!
.. I worked with Paulo on roof joists above the corridor and learnt some great carpentry tricks.. The clay was all cleared up with bee revelling in the job of cleaning all the buckets of dried lumpy clay.
All in all a satisfying day and we can all feel the end is getting slowly nearer as we tick off job after job… It may be too early to say we are getting there… Perhaps after tomorrow! In the mean time it’s great to be involved in such a great building.
Finishing Touches:
Today we finished the cladding, and 8 tonnes of fermacell, made of 90% recycled paper and a little recycled gypsum are in place. You would not believe how heavy paper can be!
This momentus event paved the way for Jimmy the painter to begin preparing to paint the inside with biosan an eco friendly anti bacterial coating.
We will be using caparol paint on the outside which is also eco friendly and has zero volatile organic compounds (smelly chemicals one normally associates with a freshly painted surface) and then we will be decorating in our unique Lush style.
Great progress was also made on the roof, with several pallets of 38mm chipboard laid. Heavy work for the carpenters Sion & Simon.
The truth window design was finally agreed & will post a photo when it’s done.
(Source: lush.co.uk)
