Blog 25: Wall Raising!

When building a straw bale house there is traditionally a wall raising, this is a community effort similar to an old school barn raising, where the straw bales are cut, laid and compressed into the house walls.

A major milestone for our build, it was scheduled for Saturday 2nd March 2019.  The plan for the day was for it to be hands on and fun for the people joining us and the amount of wall area actually raised was a secondary concern - more of a bonus than an expectation..

We invited a few family and friends already involved with our build to join us on the Saturday, but primarily we invited people that were already on their own strawbale house building journey, anywhere from interested in the idea to already committed to building, who would appreciate the opportunity to get hands on experience with straw building.

We started putting straw into the walls a few days ahead of the big day, with Pat and Nils focusing on completing the upper gables in the east and west exterior walls, as these required working at height and with their wedge shape the straw bales were more challenging to lay and to compress. 

We also had a dry run with one of the lower wall panels to practice ahead of the wall raising to ensure we had alignment on the method, clear instructions and all of the supporting materials we would need on-site for multiple teams to work together.

The large hammers (a.k.a mauls..) that you see being used to ’persuade’ bales were made on-site by Pat, with Walnut wood heads and hand shaped Ash wood handles.. amazing craftsmanship and just what we needed for initial compression and straightening.

Our helpers were invited to arrive at 10am on Saturday morning and bring a plate for a pot luck lunch.  By the time we had inducted everyone onto the building site and then worked through instructions and alignment for the day we were well on the way to 11am, we had a great lunch around 1pm and then finished up around 4pm.

During the day we had some family visitors, my aunt and uncle Anne and uncle Nick and their grandchildren Sophia and India (my second cousins), it was great to show them round the emerging house and for them to also be able to observe the wall raising. 

We have a short video to capture the day, again edited and produced by Michael, with a time lapse from Alessandra and some great stills, video and drone footage from James and Anita - thanks all, awesome!

It was great day, learning, doing and having fun creating each wall panel - as they say many hands make light work and so in about 4 working hours we completed raising the exterior walls and they look great. The many hands belonged to.. Pat, Nils, Andy, Marie, Bianca, Rumi, Sol, James, Anita, Alessandra and Andrew, much appreciation for your contributions to creating Nga Kereru.

On Sunday we had our immediate neighbours in the valley over for a BBQ and drinks celebrating the roof on and wall raising.  We were a bit challenged for numbers that we could invite, hosting it from the caravan, awning and our makeshift deck (an oversized pallet) - so we are running smaller social gatherings, but more of them…  until we can invite everyone later in the year to our house warming up in the new house.  The local weather turned on a great afternoon, the turn-out of our immediate neighbours was also great and most important it was a fun afternoon with our new friends.

The week following the wall raising, we moved onto raising the internal straw walls and doing a lot of finishing work on the straw walls in preparation for the start of plastering.  Plastering is our next major activity and this one will take several weeks to complete - starting with the foundations, onto the walls, base coats and finish coats.. inside and out.. and caring for the walls as the plaster sets and cures between coats.  A lot more to learn, and we are grateful to have Pat as our builder as he is recognised as an expert for clay and lime plaster systems in New Zealand.

Coming up in my next blog posts will be the start of our plastering journey and.. the insulation and wrapping of the framed exterior walls ready for the arrival and installation of our much-anticipated exterior joinery - we will be closed in soon! 

Thanks to everyone who supported us for the wall raising.. big success!