This has been an excellent workshop all round.  Thanks to Kim and Andy and ALL of the participants we all worked very hard and mainly due to the wonderful food provided.

We achieved a great amount in the 5 days and tomorrow the trusses will all be on.

All in all we now have the walls built, compressed and with two coats of lime render on the outside and one coat of earthen render on most of the inside.

Square One

We have posted several news items form Toby Weymiller and his family who live in a straw bale house in Japan, a beautiful home.  Toby has not been affected by the earthquake and here is his blog on the recent events in Japan:

We are okay. Thanks, people. Way up north in the safety net of Hokkaido.  As you know, many, many others aren’t so lucky. I’ve posted a blog on where people can donate to help.

Toby Weymiller
http://maikotobybomber.blogspot.com

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou

“The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now. There is no enlightenment outside of daily life.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

We had a great day with excellent weather.  The pump has put on one coat of lime render to all of the external walls.  The team put on a lot of earthen first coat render to the internal walls and completed half of the walls inside.

Tomorrow we will start putting the trusses up and continue with the the rendering.  Electrical conduit and other services such as water pipes will be started as well as starter studs for the internal stud walls.

Some more photos from Lardner sent to me by Kim and Andy our clients.

Missed yesterday kind of busy with a storm in the afternoon sent to test us.  Today was a beautiful day and we got a lot done.  Pre-compression went very well and we achieved 60mm all round.  Brush cutting and preparing the walls for renderingf was also done today.  We start pumping on lime render tomorrow.

A good energetic team arrived this morning and we are well under way with raising the walls.  At this pace we will have all the walls built tomorrow with top plates on and ready for pre-compression.

We are well under way and Andy and Kim have done a great job.  We also have the help of Benn Dodd who is a very keen straw bale builder.  Our site builder is Col with loads of experience.  We start tomorrow morning to raise the walls.

Welcome to Lardner (Photo by Ben Dodd)

You can follow the progress to date here:

https://sites.google.com/a/earthshack.com.au/earthshack/photo-gallery

We will be there Wednesday 9th to prepare for the weekend.

The last day of the workshop and we said good bye to all and sundry.  It has been en excellent workshop with some wonderful results all round.  We have the roof plates all covered and ready for the

End of the workshop ready for the roof!

trusses as well as two coats of earthen render on three sides.

We also put up some lime render and lime earth sand and chaff render or Maudie’s Magical Mix.  The preferred render was the earthen render with chaff.