Straw bale 'joinery'

[marcus]

I'm doing a couple of bits and pieces for a little straw bale building at the moment, and I was over there today to measure up. I was talking to the chap who's making it about how he's doing the windows. He's put some rough softwood frames round a sealed unit, and he's going to put these into the openings and then render right over the frames and onto the glass — sort of rounded hobbity effect is the idea I think. He swears he's done this before and it's fine. He's not intending to seal it round the glass with anything else, says that lime render sticks to glass and all will be well.

This looks like complete nonsense to me for multiple reasons, whether he does any extra sealing or not. But then I'm no expert on lime render, or straw bale, and I'm not a hobbit. Am I going mad? What do you think?

 

[ColeyS1]

Say if a pane of glass breaks and it needs replacing ?

Sent from my GT-I9300

 

[marcus]

Exactly! Or when the sealed unit seals go and they mist up and look rubbish. And I can't believe that water won't get straight past the render and into the straw, surely?

 

[ColeyS1]

Seems a bit odd, wonder if the customers aware that it'll be a right pita if something does go wrong.

Sent from my GT-I9300

 

[bugbear]

Perhaps you can find the Ben Law cruck frame build online somewhere. That was timber frame, bale filled, lime plastered and VERY well thought out.

BugBear

 

[longinthetooth]

The Ben Law house doesn't relate to the construction described, it was timber-clad with the windows in conventional frames set outboard in the construction, and the bales were for insulation, non-structural, all inboard and plastered internally.

I don't think it's necessary to be down on low-tech, low-impact building / life-style. You could always cut out a failed glass unit & render in another one.

 

[ColeyS1]

How's the cill gonna work ? Slate or something butted up to the glass :?

Sent from my GT-I9300

 

[marcus]

"I don't think it's necessary to be down on low-tech, low-impact building / life-style. You could always cut out a failed glass unit & render in another one."

Personally I'm not, anything but, but still it needs to last and not leak, surely, given someone else is paying for it!

I've looked at lots of pictures of straw bale buildings on the web, and can't find any done like that, even the really low tech ones have normal frames of one sort or another.

I'm not sure how the cill's goin to work; there were just the sealed units in these square frames ready to go in. Will ask next time I'm there. Maybe it will be fine, just seems odd to me.