How to Set the Straw Bales to Construct a Straw Bale House

Video Transcript

"Right now we’re going to actually set the bales, we’re going to actually lift the bales up. And you want to try to not stress the wires and whatever any more than you have to. In order to set the bale on the very bottom, you’re going to have to lift it, then pinch it. We’re going to want to set it straight on top so that- it’s real important that if you have to pull it up and set it a couple of times, then do it because this is where your walls going to be once you set it; and you just let the rebar protrude through. I thought this would stick up a little more than that. You usually want them to stick up at least about four or five inches. That’s about enough. Today for the demo, I’m just going to give you an idea of how to get this done. Now, you saw how jiggly and wiggly and loose the bale was when it’s over here, and look how firm it already is. It’s already sitting solid and this block’s not attached to a solid foundation or anything. So you can see, and this is not a very well baled bale, but you can still use it if you wanted to. Especially if you have a post and beam structure and you’re just using it as infill, it wouldn’t really matter a whole lot on the tightness of the bale, although it’s always optimum to have it tight just to keep things out. So you can already see how much this is already firmed up here and it’s more solid. And you’re going to kind of check it out and look and see if it looks fairly straight- it’s pretty good, and I could lift it up and move it if I wanted to, but I think we’re going to leave it here right now for this purpose, just so we can get enough time to show you what to do with these things. Now we’re going to set the other bale on real quick. And what’s really great about the straw is if you want to have some bends in your wall, you can pull and shape the bale and stucco it or plaster it the way you want. So that’s part of the beauty that I love of straw bale- it’s real versatile that way. But right now we want to straighten it up so the wall will look straight. And we’re going to stake it with a piece of rebar. And really, what you’re going to do- normally you stack these more like bricks, where you’re going to stack another bale here and you’re going to have half of a bale on this one and half on here. But for today’s sake, I’m just going to show you two bales together and what we’re going to do with them. "