Tag: Light Clay

After the baling was done, we shaped the walls using a large weed whacker for rough shaping and the Lancelot for fine detail shaping. Having the bale walls fairly smooth and plumb will make the plastering much easier later on.

It’s possible to achieve beautiful finish plaster on top of undulating bale walls, but it is a lot more work and uses a lot more plaster, which involves extra labour and cost. No one wants that. It’s much better to take the time to even out rough spots on the wall at this stage.

The placement heights of windows can be determined ahead of time in the design of the plans, although the nature of bale building means that the most efficient height placement of windows follows the heights of courses (rows) of bales. This way, fewer labour-intensive custom sized bales need to be made.

If you know ahead of time the size of the straw bales you will be using, this can be factored into the design plans. But if bales are sourced after plans are drawn and end up being a different height, slight adjustments in window heights may be useful to ensure a faster baling process.