[Greenbuilding] straw clay

JOHN SALMEN terrain at shaw.ca
Fri Oct 15 14:19:39 CDT 2010


I'm never one to discount working hard - the problem is when you have to pay
people for their time and factor that into someone elses budget and make
them feel happy about it.

A small house might have 50 cubic yards of material in it for walls. That is
a lot of material (think 10 cement trucks in a row). 

That said I agree with you and think it is a great way to go and keeps the
economy local as you are paying people and using local ingredients - as long
as an owner is motivated to make the extra investment.


  
JOHN SALMEN ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN
4465 UPHILL RD,. DUNCAN, B.C.  CANADA, V9L 6M7
PH 250 748 7672 FAX 250 748 7612 CELL 250 246 8541
terrain at shaw.ca


-----Original Message-----
From: Leslie Moyer [mailto:unschooler at lrec.org] 
Sent: October 15, 2010 12:02 PM
To: Clarke Olsen
Cc: JOHN SALMEN; 'Chris Koehn'; greenbuilding at lists.bioenergylists.org
Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] straw clay

  I'm a 5'0" tall, overweight almost-50 year old woman who spends too 
much time at a desk.  I've also had experience with many forms of 
natural building, so I've been on a variety of natural building sites 
and I know what the labor of natural building feels like. ALL forms of 
natural building are labor-intensive--that is surely true.  But I don't 
understand how it can be argued that--on that continuum of natural 
building--straw clay could be classified as being on the "labor 
intensive" end of that spectrum.

When I was taught to build with straw clay, we simply put straw on a 
tarp, poured thin mud on it, stirred the straw a bit with our hands, and 
then "fluffed" the tarp up and down to distribute the mud.  Done.  Then 
all we had to do was place it into the forms.  There are reasons I might 
not choose light straw clay, but labor is certainly not one of them and 
I'm a wimp.

--Leslie


On 10/15/10 10:34 AM, Clarke Olsen wrote:
> Labor feels intensive when it's on the site.
>
> On Oct 15, 2010, at 9:28 AM, Leslie Moyer wrote:
>
>>  On 10/14/10 11:12 PM, JOHN SALMEN wrote:
>>> It is a great material however and seems to be working in our climate -
>>> labour intensive.
>>>
>>
>> I would strongly disagree with its characterization as labor 
>> intensive. As far as natural building materials go, it is, by far, 
>> among the most labor UN-intensive.
>>
>> --Leslie
>>







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