The Ganmain Landcare Group and the Ganmain Public School Initiative

At the Hall of Conciliation

Yesterday over 300 primary school children from our shire visited Ganmain for a wonderful day of interprative displays of what makes a small town like Ganmain tick.  It involved a well organised exchange of around 20-30 students at a time to each of the interactive events.  These included sheaf hay stooking, chaff making, historical museum, Wiradjuri art, craft and music, a visit to the Ganmain Conciliation and Learning centre, straw bale building and as an audience for a live recorded interview with residents of Ganmain new and old conducted by Bill Thompson.

Here are some photos of the day more to come later as we were involved in showing the students the straw bale Hall of Conciliation and the other straw bale buildings as well as a practical demonstration of earth rendering.

Well done Ganmain!

Here is a brief reply from Juliett Webb and how her straw bale home was performing:

“It is everything we hoped it would be and more… It is a beautiful peaceful place to live in and its insulation value is wonderful. Even Black Saturday only required three hours of air conditioning to reduce the days temperature and keep it stable. You cannot believe how lovely it is.”  Juliett.

Day 4 of the Orbost Workshop

Juliett Webb House Orbost Photos

In the following sequence of photos you can see how to build a very low cost straw bale pavilion Pakistan style.  This method suits those of us who want a low cost building which will stand up to a major earthquake.

The Finished Product Stunning

Darcey Donovan PAKSAB Teaching

PAKSBAB Pakistan Straw Bale and Appropriate Building {Web Site}

Darcey Donovan
Founder / C.E.O.

Since February 2006, Darcey has committed herself to adapting, teaching and promoting straw bale and other appropriate building methods in the earthquake affected region of northern Pakistan. Darcey has been practicing engineering since 1986.

Pakistan Straw Bale and Appropriate Building (PAKSBAB) is an international group established in 2006, whose mission is to adapt and apply straw bale and other appropriate building methods to meet the needs of the rural poor living in earthquake and extreme weather regions in developing countries such as Pakistan.  Here are some photos of how to build in a sustainable way.

Harvest the Sustainable Way

In the next post we will show you how they do this low cost building a method developed by PAKSBAB for this earthquake prone part of the word.  The video of the test done on the method can be found here or below in a previous post.  This is a very exiting development for straw bale building world wide and thanks go to all of the team at PAKSBAB and their countless supporters world wide.

Thank you Darcey for the photos and a special thanks to Shannon Whitnack for going to so much trouble to get the photos to us here in Australia.  Shannon is the Donor/Public Relations person for PAKSBAB.  You can donate to this cause via their web site above.

Congratulations Darcey, PAKSBAB and Team!

They Came by Air

It was FUN!!!

We had a great Easter workshop and our students came by plane/train/boat and train/coach and car.  They came from Tasmania via New Zealand, Western Australia, South Australia, Queensland, the ACT, Victoria and New South Wales and a German lass.

More photos when they come to hand.  The class of 104 performed beyond expectations and many friends were made but more important the class of 104 will build out of straw bales, one day!!!  Thank you all.

Those of you who live in earthquake prone countries maybe interested in this live show which is on right now (March 30th 7.00am Australian Time), although I missed the good bit; it is still of interest.  I am thinking of the earthquakes in Pakistan and China and how this technology just might save lives.

On Friday, March 27, Pakistan Straw Bale and Appropriate Building (PAKSBAB) conducted shake table tests of a full-scale straw bale house at the University of Nevada, Reno.  They begun around 10 am PST with the final tests (high amplitude motions) and will continue increasing the shaking amplitude until failure.

The images that look like photos are actually live shots and if you go to the site now, you can actually format the window to show all four camera views, set the frames per second rate at 10 and watch what is going on there right now the building apparently took longer to shake to failure than initially expected… I’m guessing that the tests will resume at some point today. It would be nice to have an official update about how far the testing went on Friday in terms of magnitude of forces, etc. and what’s coming up…

http://tpm.ce.unr.edu/perl/portal.pl?section=local_video

Looks like this building survived and as soon as I know what magnitutude of earthquake was simulated I will let you know.

For the abstract and handout please go to:

http://nees.unr.edu/projects/straw_bale_house.html.

Message form Darcey Donovan 3rd April 2009

I’m pleased to report that our straw bale house performed exceptionally well during the shake table tests at the University of Nevada, Reno, last Friday.  The input motion was the Canoga Park Topanga Canyon record of the 1994 Northridge, California earthquake, Mw 6.7.  The house was subjected to increasing levels of seismic shaking, beginning at 25% of the recorded ground acceleration and increasing at 25% increments until failure. The house survived 0.82g (0.82 times the acceleration of gravity), twice the acceleration of the Canoga Park record.  The Geological Survey of Pakistan estimates the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, Mw 7.6, to have had peak ground accelerations in the range of 0.3 to 0.6g.

I am extremely grateful to EERI, NEES and UNR for their generous support, and to all the hardworking volunteers who dedicated countless hours to this project.

To view the abstract and download a handout please go to http://nees.unr.edu/projects/straw_bale_house.html.   See http://www.kolotv.com/home/headlines/42035847.html# for publicity we’ve received regarding the test.  For more information about PAKSBAB please visit www.paksbab.org.

More videos and test report to come…

Kind regards,

Darcey

Darcey Donovan, P.E., C.E.O.

Pakistan Straw Bale and Appropriate Building (PAKSBAB)

The Grape Escape Weekend by the Coolamon Rotary Club.

Members of Coolamon Rotary Club and their partners recently visited the jumbo straw bale winery at Rutherglen in Victoria.  The visit was party of a wine and food safari to the Rutherglen area of NE Victoria.

Valhalla Wines

Council to create history with social housing made from straw

North Kesteven District Council will be the first local authority in England to build straw houses to be used as social housing.  Planning applications for four straw homes are with North Kesteven District Council in Lincolnshire. The two applications for the two sites, in Martin and in Waddington, are for two semi-detached homes in each village.

Read the full story here:

Council Straw Bale Housing

Jamahl and Tahlia - That is Conciliation!

There are new photographs of this lovely building now on up our projects page.  Remember that this building was built in 5 days by the delegates to the International Straw Bale Building Conference held in December 2002 in Ganmain and Wagga Wagga.

The Hall of Conciliation Ganmain.

Krona Siberia Russia

We hope you enjoy this story out of Russia by a good friend of the straw bale building fraternity in the world Jeff Ruppert .  Jeff’s story on their trip to Siberia can be found here:

TRIP TO SIBERIA

Builders Without Borders

The Altai Project Southern Siberia

Jeff Ruppert, P.E.  Principal Odisea LLC
Engineering and Consulting,  Boulder, CO  80302

www.odiseanet.com