[Strawbale] compressing or not

[asbn]

Dear Jure

The need for compression in the wall is depending on the weight and  
pre-compression of the bales.
If your bales are floppy (fairly light and smooth), its better to  
compress them.
Alejandro Lopez from Spain told me, that he compressed his bales  
before the infill
with a self-built manual strawbale-press, this worked wonderful.

When the bales are good compressed (coming e.g. from a Welger 72 or  
higher)
it is not necessary to compress them, when the wall is non-loadbearing.

But there are several methods to wrap these bales around an existing  
building:
like loadbearing (with compression-strings)
in a hybrid-construction like CUT (compression with brackets every row)
binding it directly to the wall
or with the Kuba-method (H out of hazelnut-branches)

see: http://www.strawleonardo.eu/best-practice/straw-bale-technique-galleries-wrapping/

So in some of these techniques bales are compressed during wrapping- 
process

In any case, a good plaster directly on the bales prevents settling of  
the bales afterwards
(due to the connection between straw and the plaster in this sandwich- 
construction).

But a compression is not only to prevent settling of the bales,
it is also an easy method to close the gaps between the bales, when  
the bales are not in best cubic size.

all the best
Herbert Gruber
-----------------
asbn - austrian strawbale network
3720 Ravelsbach, Baierdorf 6
Tel. 02958-83640
asbn at baubiologie.at
www.baubiologie.at



Am 11.03.2014 um 12:59 schrieb Jure Pozar:

> Dear all,
>
> 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.
>
> Cheers
>
> Jure
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