Blog 20: Straw and bricks
Add in sticks to the blog title and we are back revisiting the three pigs story!! there has been a lot written already about timber framing, so it’s time now for an update on the straw and bricks….
From the start I have been sweating on supply of the straw bales, mainly due to a Grand Designs NZ TV programme where they had major problems with getting the straw for their build. As project manager (and more importantly builders labourer) I wanted to lock down our straw order, price and estimated timing as early as possible. I had a few things to learn.. the seasoned veterans in the grain harvesting and straw/hay baling industry know that you make hay when the sun shines and no one knows what the weather will bring in any given season, so they resisted (nicely) all attempts to tie things down - it was to be business done on trust and best efforts.
Pat and I had scheduled conservatively from the start for the straw to be delivered in late Feb early March.
Straw is a by-product of annual grain crops and so each year is a different story, feast or famine… As luck would have it 2018-19 has been a feast year with rain and sunshine both in good measure in Hawkes Bay, ideal for growing barley and wheat. So, by mid-December we started to get confidence of local supply and by early January we were firming up our plans - at least a little. It has actually been such a good season that the barley was harvested in late January, with the barley straw baled and delivered to us a month early.
We found our straw supply through a local baling contractor Dave Small who wasn’t harvesting straw this year but helped us out by referring us through to Russel Agnew. Russell confirmed that he could supply our order of 320 conventional straw bales with barley straw from Matapiro station, which is only an hour’s drive west from us, at a good price thanks to good old economics of supply supply vs demand working for us in a good season, great!
Dave had also recommended Brad Voleman to do the transport of the bales from the field to our building site, so I got in touch with him and agreed a fair price per bale for the transport and some help with unloading. We had some delays with getting the straw delivered, but it was not really time critical for us as we just stacked it under the roof until we are ready to start putting it into the walls later in February.
All work related to harvesting and baling is weather dependant - the sun was shining so the balers and the transport teams were working around the clock under the pump from everyone in the supply chain all wanting to hit the window of ideal weather - they are under a lot of time pressure and I have personal experience to confirm that the loading and unloading/stacking of the bales is hard physical work.
We got a call to say they were baling so Pat, Alessandra and I took a drive out there.
Pat did a check on the string tightness and bale density - basically picking up the bales by the strings and most importantly knowing what you are doing :-)
It was great for us to see the straw from the field all the way to our house.
Delivery times kept sliding backward and in the end the truck loaded with our straw came up the drive around 8pm a few days later, we really appreciate Pat staying on to help. We got started unloading and stacking bales into the garage area of the house as the sun was starting to set and we finished the job around 9:30pm in the dark.
Pat has done a lot of work with stacking bales over the years so he had the job of laying up the stack inside the house, I was in the middle moving the bales tossed off the truck by Brad, from the ground into the garage and onto the growing stack. It is the hardest physical work I can remember doing this lifetime, I leaked a river of sweat, being in the middle of a work chain it just never stopped.
I have big respect for anyone who does that for a living.. When Brad had finished with us he was off to pick-up and then deliver another truck load - just the thought of his work day/night is enough to trigger me wanting to lie down and have a rest ;-)
The blog title also mentions Bricks... so to complete the story, we managed to snaffle 1200 clean recycled bricks (old chimneys) from Facebook market place at a great price.
We borrowed Karen’s trailer and across two days we did 3 trips from Napier South to Maraetotara spreading the load across the ute and the trailer, with Alessandra and I loading, unloading and stacking them all.
In the middle of this we had the straw delivered so a lot of calories were burned in that 48 hour period! The bricks will be used to form the base for our pizza oven, our outside bath and shower area and our wood shed with some left over for landscaping borders/paths.
We continue working on the many details to be ready for the pre-wrap building inspection (fingers crossed) and we expect to have the wall raising day (putting straw into the walls) on Saturday 2nd March, Yeeharr!! on track