[Strawbale] 3-ply straw walls

[Jan Hollan]

Dear balers,

what about becoming devoted bale-splitters, at some occasions? Of course,
I'm returning to my ``old'' idea of composing the insulation layer of
several sub-layers, creating separate convection chambers (a kind of
quadruple window, with three air spaces) and reaching the best possible
lambda 0.04 W/m.K this way (i.e., 40cm insulation layer of U=0.10 W/m2K).

Our work in Hostetin went even better than I expected. 85cm sided large
bales were split in 7cm to 11cm slices easily, and the slices were easy to
put vertically to the wall, among hollow ``ladders'' made as a support for
the future larch cladding. Even from a dozen small bales we had, this was
easy (for one narrow module, the one before the last, they were
excellent). In just one field (first floor, left from the last window) we
have employed small bales ``as is'', without unpacking and separating
their slices by paper.

During some five days of installation, we improved the procedure to be
quicker and to give better quality. E.g., we've made the ladders smoother,
by putting 3cm EPS between their sides.

A series of pictures (and four ``movies'') from the installation (some
show wet bale surfaces, which were successfully cut away by a chain saw)
is at
  http://amper.ped.muni.cz/jenik/sb/3-4ply/

At home, I plan to put straw slices to OSB?-sided modules horizontally, at
the ground, and just then attaching these modules to the wall. I'll report
about it when realized.

wishing you dry weather for straw manipulation,
 jenik