Earth Building Conference

Mar 16, 2015 | Newsletters

Strawbale-Window-Sill

STRAWBALE + EARTH

Tips ‘n’ tricks, whispers & workshops on natural building. Earth Building Conference

Spring is springing or has it sprung? It’s hard to tell with the changing weather at the moment. There are a lot of strawbale and earth building courses and workshops so we’ve listed below some of the events coming up. If you’d like general information from us you can contact us. We’ve also got new photos and an article for you this issue. Oct 2013
Demos & workshops

October 18-20 Gardening Australia Live Demos & Workshops

We’re teaming up with Milkwood Permaculture to help with a strawbale piazza and do free talks and workshops. We’ll also have our traditional timber frames there. It’s at Moore Park in Sydney. For more info> Calling on: skilled volunteers (good carpentry skills are required and white card), please contact us if you can help us set up & dismantle on 16,17 and 21 October, we’d love your help.  

Course

1-3 November Strawbale Building Course

From fundamentals to advanced strawbale building techniques, this 3 day course is for owner builders, architects, designers, engineers, tradies and strawbale maniacs. For more info & bookings>

Photos

Photos photos and more photos

Some of you can’t get enough of the straw bale and earth homes that we build and so, for you especially, we’ve loaded some albums in Flickr here> We just ask that you don’t publish them or use them without first asking us. We’ve just finished a Stepping Stone. Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook as all new photos go on there first.

Conference

An Inspiring Earth Building Conference 2013

The Earth Building Assoc of Australia just had their yearly conference. A record 100+ people attended! The calibre of speakers was incredible. From archaeologists talking about the 9,000 year history of earth buildings (how and what they built back then), to how to design energy efficient homes in cold climates, to earth buildings in aboriginal communities, how to make mud brick domes, as well as the city ofAuroville (how they turned a man made desert-scape in India to a metropolis where the Earth Institute resides). It was truly an inspiring weekend. We were invited to do a stud wall in-fill cob demonstration of how we do our internal cob walls and why. There were other speakers and demos on rammed earth, light straw, clay rendering, poured earth, mud bricks and super adobe. Bookmark the 2014 conference, it’s well worth going.

Info

Difference Between Thermal Mass & Insulation

Many people ask us what the difference is, so we’ve explained the basic theory here> Examples of thermal mass in natural buildings include: mud bricks, poured earth, rammed earth, adobe, super adobe, cob and wattle and daub . Examples of insulation in natural buildings include: straw bales, light straw, insulated poured or rammed earth just to name a few. From our experience using a hybrid of insulation and thermal mass in homes creates an even, consistent temperature especially in cold climates, or climates where there is a large range of winter and summer temperatures.