Huff ‘n’ Puff Strawbale Constructions | Professional Strawbale Construction

Home is a Straw Bale House

WELCOME TO OUR WEB SITE!

Year of the Dragon

SEASONS GREETINGS FROM SUSAN AND JOHN FOR 2012. HAPPY BALING AND LET US HOPE THAT THERE WILL BE MANY NEW STRAW BALE HOMES BUILT DURING 2012.

We have returned from Africa and are now back at work and in the office throughout January until our first workshop for 2012 at Braidwood.

If you are interested in Huff ‘n’ Puff Constructions conducting a straw bale building workshop on your own home here is what you can expect to happen:

DAY ONE OF THE WORKSHOP NOTE THE EXCELLENT PREPARATION

DAY FIVE OF THE WORKSHOP AND THE TRUSSES ARE GOING UP!

WHY STRAW BALE? ONE ANSWER: SUPER INSULATION = LOW POWER BILLS:

Surge in price of electricity:

POWER bills in Australia are surging at eight times the rate of price rises across the industrialised world.

A new electricity cost analysis by the International Energy Agency reveals that the average price rose 3.3 per cent in real terms across industrialised countries last year — 6.2 per cent for industry and 1.7 per cent for households. See: http://www.solarchoice.net.au

But electricity bills for Australian households rose 13.6 per cent in the same period, based on Australian Bureau of Statistics data.

Our own straw bale home in hot summers and cool winters does not have an air conditioner and only one small natural gas heater. Let us show you how you can pay for your straw bale home over 30 years by reducing your heating and cooling bills. Call us or email us any time:

HAPPY TO RETURN ALL CALLS.

OFFICE 02 69276027

MOBILE 0412 11 61 57

Email: jacksflat@gmail.com

If you are unable to call us then please include your phone number in your email and we will call you back as soon as is practical.

We have embraced new technology so emails will be easier and quicker to reply to send them in!!

To all our valued clients we have solved the booking form problems. However we were unable to save any of the many forms sent in during this outage, so if you have not heard back form us re your enquiry please re-submit the form. Thanks.

_________________________________________________________________________

IN THE MEAN TIME 2012 is here!

Our next straw bale building workshops:

# 131 BRAIDWOOD NEW SOUTH WALES

Australia Day Thursday 26th January – Monday 30th January 2012.

Plans, directions and accommodation details here: Next Workshop

Coming to the end of Day 1 AUSTRALIA DAY 2012

Putting up top plates on day 2

Follow our progress in the daily posts over this workshop below.

_________________________________________________________________________

# 132 GANMAIN NEW SOUTH WALES

EASTER Weekend April 6-10 2012

FOR BOOKINGS GO HERE: Workshop Enrolment

To all our valued clients we have solved the booking form problems. However we were unable to save any of the many forms sent in during this outage, so if you have not heard back form us re your enquiry please re-submit the form. Thanks.

________________________________________________________________________

NEW WORKSHOP SET AND CONFIRMED FOR VICTORIA

#133 WANGARATTA VICTORIA

ANZAC week Saturday 21st April 2012-Wednesday April 25th ANZAC DAY 2012

_________________________________________________________________________

PLEASE CALL US IF YOU NEED ANY FURTHER INFORMATION 02 69276027

Latest Update here: Workshops Comments from Participants

NULAWALA COMMUNITY HALL VIDEO:

Award winning straw bale community centre in the heart of Sydney built for the Fairfield City Council.

Designed by Envirotecture, straw bale by Huff ‘n’ Puff Constructions.

Mongarlowe Workshop Day 2

End of day 2

Another very busy day making top plates and raising bales. We also had our slide show this evening so a long day as well.

Here are a few photos of the day’s progress.

: Building walls

: Busy team heads down

: Many hands make light work of top plates

: Job done now to fix them

: End of day 2

: East wall level before pre-compresion

Mongarlowe Workshop Day 1

The South wall

We have had a very busy day with a great team of builders. There are people from Melbourne, South Africa, Scotland, Sydney and locals from Braidwood and area. This area of Australia is fast becoming a hub of straw bale buildings. We ended up with all the window and door frames made and 4 courses of bales put up in place. Tired but happy at the result today. The weather is excellent cool and dry with some mizzle in the late afternoon.

: Fourth row of bales almost done

: Busy building Huff n Puff style

: The North Wall

: The West wall

: Custom bale making

: The South wall

Mongarlowe Workshop Ready

Our office!

We had a great day and everyone put in a big effort to be ready for the start of tomorrow’s workshop. We have a good team arriving tomorrow morning and all is ready for Australia Day. There will be plenty of time to build this cottage with a lot of theory and some good times ahead. Here are 6 more photos showing the progress we made today:

: Start of the day!

: The North Wall

: Our office!

: Window and door frames going up

: Window frame details

: Square frames ready for bales.

Mongarlowe Workshop Australia Day Week Preparation

Bottom plates going down

Great to be back at work again in 2012. We are preparing for the start of tomorrow’s workshop Australia Day 2012.

The building is a hybrid load bearing cottage for our clients. The size 11 metres by 8 metres with a loft and a verandah all round.

The foundations have been built and the building is built on a cement block stem wall with engaged piers bearers and joists for the timber flooring. Here are a few photos of the building which is situated near the small village of Mongarlowe which is 20 kilometres away from the historic township of Braidwood.

I will post photos every day now for the next 5 days of our progress:

: Tie downs and ant cap details

: Details of pre-compression rod

: Bottom plates going down

: East view of the building

: Close up of foundations

: Joists

Matts Myhrman and Judy Knox Interview

This video is a tribute to the pioneers of straw bale building Matts and Judy. Judy passed away just before Christmas and we will always remember her and the way that she encouraged us to get stuck into building in straw bale down under. God speed Judy a great lady and one that will continue to inspire balers all over the world through her and Matt’s legacy.

The interview took place at the 2007 Colorado Straw Bale Conference. It’s great to hear both Matts and Judy talk about their beginnings in the early days of the strawbale revival, and to again hear Judy’s voice, intelligence, and spirit. Thanks Martin for the link.

Bwindi Gorillas

We met Ruhondeza in the Bwindi impenetrable forest in SW Uganda. We had an excellent adventure and climbed the Mountain of the Moon for the AIDS orphans of Sub-Saharan Africa. More stories here: http://club.coolamonrotary.com/

One of the gorillas we met at Bwindi, this is a black back from the Mubare family group. One of the best experiences one can have in the wild is visiting these mountain gorillas of which there are only 720 left in the wild. It was a tough trek but worth every ounce of effort that we put in.

SITUPS Stage 1 Complete

The Living Room

We have now completed Stage 1 of the new SITUPS installation in a large straw bale home. ALL the internal walls of this 4 bedroom straw bale home, built using the Huff ‘n’ Puff Hybrid method, have been installed and rendered with one coat of lime plaster. This we managed in 14 working days. At the same time we also rendered the external walls with TWO coats of lime render and the external walls were also meshed.

We had a dream run and they worked beyond our expectations. All the SITUPS were fixed to the concrete slab and also to the trusses with sliding hangers. Details of how we did this in amazing time will be posted to the SITUPS section of this web site when we return from Africa in late December.

Here are a series of photos of how we left the home now ready for window and doors to get the build to lock up:

SITUPS Going UP!

Still modelling not sure about the colour!

It has taken us a few years now to get to this point. This week we started rendering the 150mm SITUPS and all went well. The first coat is almost done of lime render. This is a watershed day for these panels and we made the hard ones first!