How We Built Sonny's Shed
by Alyson
Ewald, October 30, 2003
We
began by filling plastic rice sacks with about seven and a half shovelfuls
of road base gravel. Then we stapled the top, folded it over three times,
and stapled again. We were having trouble making the bags the right
size until Lyuda, Tanya, and Valya devised a handy trick: put the bag
in a 5-gallon bucket, fill it to the top, then lift it out while holding
the bucket down by standing on another bag looped through the handle.
We laid and tamped four courses of bags, running green plastic strapping
tape beneath the bottom course every few feet. We should have alternated
putting the long ends of the tape on the inside and outside of the walls;
we had to go back later and pull some through, which was difficult.
We stuck foam insulation along the bags on the inside of the walls and
backfilled the soil from the floor against it. We stabbed pieces of
rebar vertically down into the center of the bags every few feet to
provide pins to stick the first course or two of bales onto.
We were using two-string bales with nylon string and planning to stack
them on edge. Using our gloved hands or a piece of 2X4 covered with
expanded metal lathe, we "rasped" the ends of the bales to
make them square and flat. This process helped tremendously at later
stages, as the bales stacked neatly and snugly together and left hardly
any voids to stuff.
In a feed trough, we used shovels to mix water with dry clay until it
was a heavy clay slip the texture of thick milk chocolate or heavy cream
and most of the lumps were dissolved. Then we dipped the bales in the
slip on the inside and outside and sometimes an end (corner), whatever
surfaces were destined to be plastered. The bales were heavy when coated
with clay (even on only two sides) and generally took two people to
lift. Placing them properly led us all to become extremely muddy, with
the exception of Viktor, who had crafted himself a full-body apron out
of plastic sheeting and baling twine.
Jeff Ruppert arrived for our first baling afternoon and helped us place
the bales. He showed us how the bales on edge "lock" into
the bales above and below, especially when you stack the straw's ends
on ends, and folds on folds. He said that very little, if any, insulative
value is lost despite the thinner wall, because the straw is standing
vertically and therefore is not compacted when the wall is compressed.
Apparently bales on edge yield a more stable wall because they don't
tend to slip as much as bales lying down.
He instructed us to start with the corners and work inwards along the
wall, overlapping the bales over the ends of the earth bags as in a
brick wall. We made partial bales when necessary. We put the door bucks
in place and braced them. (One of these doors would be a big window
made from a sliding door replacement.)
In this way we laid five courses of bales, overlapping them like a brick
wall above the course below. Before laying each course, we tied the
corners of the previous course, two ties per bale (one at each string).
When we reached the window, we put in the buck and cinched it in place
using one of the green straps from beneath the foundation, a ratcheting
tool, and a metal crimper. The clay-dipped bales were hard to get onto
the top course, but with strawbale stairways inside and out, Viktor
and Sonny managed it.
We laid a top plate two boards thick, using 2X10s (I think) that were
as long as the walls. We squared them and leveled them, then nailed
them together. We stuffed flakes of clay straw above the windows and
door.
Then we compressed the walls. We tossed the straps over the top plate,
threaded them through at least one bale tie, made sure they weren't
twisted, and lapped the top end over the bottom end. Then we used the
special ratchet to tighten down the strap until it was very taut. Finally
we clamped a metal crimp onto the straps to hold it in place, and released
the ratchet. We did two per wall, alternating inside then outside so
they wouldn't pull the wall over. Then we went back and did the rest,
again alternating. Then we went around the whole building and tightened
each strap a second time.
While some of us were doing this, others were sifting crusher fines
from their local quarry through a large screen laid on two bale stacks.
When it was time to start plastering, a woman named Anikke came to do
a plaster workshop for us. She said she likes to work with plasters
that are 15-30% clay. What we used that day was about 20% clay. The
recipe was: 8 shovels dry clay; 80 shovels sifted crusher fines (which
included about 10% clay); one bucket of slaked manure; one bucket of
chopped straw. She likes using crusher fines instead of sand because
the different shapes and sizes create a harder plaster. For cob, she
uses the same mixture but adds more long straw.
We made our plasters in a mixer. First we made some cob and stuffed
the cracks between bales and around doors and windows, bothering only
with cracks as deep as the length of a finger. Then we began plastering.
This first coat adhered surprisingly well to the clay-dipped bales,
such that we were able to apply a relatively heavy coat that was quite
flat and filled all voids. Sonny used the trowel with an upward stroke
and a side-to-side shimmying motion that worked the plaster into the
bales while covering a large area at once. Others for whom a hawkful
of plaster was too heavy preferred to work with their hands from a bucket.
Lyuda's trowel work drew praise from both Anikke and the usually taciturn
Sonny. Later Lyuda told me that plastering came so naturally to her
she felt connected in her veins to all the women of the world who plaster.
We did all the walls, inside and out, with the same plaster. On the
inside corners, if the corner ties between the bales got in the way,
we simply cut them away. When the plaster was leather-hard, we sponged
the walls with moist round-edged tile sponges, using a circular motion
and aiming to smooth the surface, fill any gaps, and wipe off any ridges.
The sponges are supposed to bring out the clay to the surface. If we'd
been planning to add another coat of plaster, we wouldn't have sponged
this coat. Instead we would have applied a coat with perhaps less clay
in it, then sponged it smooth.
Viktor and Valya and I made stoops for each of the door openings. They
wrote on one of them, "Made in Russia".
And that was four days of work for eight people. It's true that along
the way others chipped in besides Jeff and Anikke (several Colloquium
participants stopped by and lent a hand for a couple of hours). But
it's also true that at certain points Susan or I would leave to do email
or meet with someone, and sometimes we'd leave at 3:30 or so to jump
in the icy brook and visit some of Crestone's natural buildings. So
I'd say on average it was 32 person-days.
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