<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Dear Jure<div><br></div><div>The need for compression in the wall is depending on the weight and pre-compression of the bales.</div><div>If your bales are floppy (fairly light and smooth), its better to compress them.</div><div>Alejandro Lopez from Spain told me, that he compressed his bales before the infill</div><div>with a self-built manual strawbale-press, this worked wonderful.</div><div><br></div><div>When the bales are good compressed (coming e.g. from a Welger 72 or higher)</div><div>it is not necessary to compress them, when the wall is non-loadbearing.</div><div><br></div><div>But there are several methods to wrap these bales around an existing building:</div><div>like loadbearing (with compression-strings)</div><div>in a hybrid-construction like CUT (compression with brackets every row)</div><div>binding it directly to the wall</div><div>or with the Kuba-method (H out of hazelnut-branches)</div><div><br></div><div>see: <a href="http://www.strawleonardo.eu/best-practice/straw-bale-technique-galleries-wrapping/">http://www.strawleonardo.eu/best-practice/straw-bale-technique-galleries-wrapping/</a></div><div><br></div><div>So in some of these techniques bales are compressed during wrapping-process</div><div><br></div><div>In any case, a good plaster directly on the bales prevents settling of the bales afterwards</div><div>(due to the connection between straw and the plaster in this sandwich-construction).</div><div><br></div><div>But a compression is not only to prevent settling of the bales,</div><div>it is also an easy method to close the gaps between the bales, when the bales are not in best cubic size.</div><div><br><div> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>all the best</div><div>Herbert Gruber</div><div>-----------------</div><div>asbn - austrian strawbale network</div><div>3720 Ravelsbach, Baierdorf 6</div><div>Tel. 02958-83640</div><div><a href="mailto:asbn@baubiologie.at">asbn@baubiologie.at</a></div><div><a href="http://www.baubiologie.at">www.baubiologie.at</a></div></div><div><br></div></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"> </div><br><div><div>Am 11.03.2014 um 12:59 schrieb Jure Pozar:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> <div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"> <font face="Calibri">Dear all,<br> <br> I have a fairly simple question? Is it necessarily to compress a wall of strawbales which is supporting only itself. It is basicaly an exterior strawbale wrapper of an existing brick wall. As far as I can remember Kuba didn`t compress strawbales on his workshop on ESBG in 2011. Can the strawbales sit-down after some years due to its weight and make cracks to the exterior clay plaster? The height of the wall is less than 3 meters.<br> <br> Cheers <br> <br> Jure<br> </font> </div> ____________________________________________________<br> European strawbale building discussion list<br><br>Send all messages to:<br><a href="mailto:Strawbale@amper.ped.muni.cz">Strawbale@amper.ped.muni.cz</a><br><br>Archives, subscription options, etc:<br>http://amper.ped.muni.cz/mailman/listinfo/strawbale<br>____________________________________________________<br><br><br></blockquote></div><br></div></body></html>