The straw bale crews started preping Chinook in the last week of September. This involved taping up windows, sills and doors and anything that you had to protect from the cement that would be eventually covering the straw. The walls also had to coverd with a plastic type of mesh fabric. This would actually help to hold the straw bales and loose straw in place and would give something for the cement to grab on to.
The open wall spaces had full bales stacked one on top of the other while the openings for the door and windows were curved using a wire mesh. These area were stuffed with straw by hand and then rammed tightly with a board to fill the voids. To finish, the straw in the walls was literally stitched together using a long needle-like rod which pulled twine from one side to the other. The twine was pulled tightly to bind the straw together.
A small chain saw was used some of the time to cut out sections for around electrical boxes or odd shaped corners. The finished straw walls are about 14 inches thick and make Chinook smell just like a barn. It's all natural here! We are really happy with the "feel" of the place and the deep window boxes and maple sills look great.
It was important for the bales to keep dry so each night the entire building was wrapped up with a waterproof paper to keep the weather out.
After about 2 weeks of preping, stuffing and stitching, the walls were ready for plastering. This would require two coats of a mortar mix on both the inside and outside walls of the Chinook.
Earlier on in August crews came in to install our in-floor radiant heating system. This type of heating involves laying a series of pipes within the floor - in our case a poured concrete slab - in which pre heated water is pumped through to warm the floor. There are no hot spots when heating this way. The floor is warmed and this warmth "radiates" throughout the building for a comfortable even heat. The concrete slab becomes warm and toasty just like a rock heated by the sun. Although the Chinook will take longer to get up to the right temperature, once stabilized, it will hold the heat for longer than most other buildings. The thick straw walls will insulate to almost R50 so it is a very efficient structure. We are still trying to figure out what the energy will be to drive the system; we are considering solar thermal and solar photovoltaic as possibilities.
Once the concrete floor was poured it was troweled to a smooth and even finish. Next were the floor polishers. It took about 5 days on slow, tedious grinding to get the finish we wanted. The grinding machines ended up taking about .25" of material off of the slab, exposing the beautiful array of aggregate within the concrete. Staring with diamond bits of about 30 grit, the finish grind used diamond polishers of about 3000 grit. The final product was amazing. Just like a marble slab where you almost see your reflection.
Meg and I just came back from 3 days paddling in Algonquin Park. It was a great experience (at least some would say that) and a shortish trip down Smoke Lake, across to Bonnechere and up to Head Lake and that back across to Smoke Lake. Between the driving rain, 1C temperatures and howling wind, we had snow! On top of that, somehow I forgot to pack our camp stove. Meg and I had to madly forage around for any dry wood that we could find. Fortunately, we were able to chop up a dead cedar and strip away some birch bark from an old downed tree to make enough dry stuff to get a flame going. The hot tea and lip smacking garlic pasta with red hot chili really hit the spot after our first day. There is nothing in the world that can rival smokey camp food to comfort a grumbling stomach.Canoe traffic was negligible and the colours were brilliant. Algonquin Park is actually just passing its prime but the red and oranges are the best they have been for years. Our colours at Foxwood haven't quite peaked yet but are just about to.Chinook, our straw bale cottage, is now getting stuffed...just like a scarecrow. It's looking more like a home now, well perhaps more like a barn with all of the bales stacked in the living room. The crew should have it all closed in and plastered in a few weeks time. We'll try to do a more thorough update with photos in the near future.Last week our friendly neighbourhood fox got at 6 of our chickens. In the span of about 30 minutes they were gone, chicken heads torn off and dragged off in to the woods. It was quite shocking when we discovered the massacre about 29 minutes too late. Oh well, that's nature for you and unfortunately, is what a dog's presence likely could have prevented. At the age of 13 Shayla, our bordie collie, huskie, coyote cross sadly succumbed to cancer at the end of August. She was a great friend, and like Howie our chocolate lab who passed away a few years ago, was a tremendous partner in our family and played an important role at Foxwood. Now all we have to guard the place are our two cats, Martha and Zazoo. They are hardy what you would call ferocious, but nevertheless loved members of our family.
