The Natural Building blog: Friland Denmark - Straw Bale Building project

We were invited to take part and teach in a Straw bale building project in the wonderful, very welcoming and homely village of Friland in Denmark. Friland is about one hours drive from Arhus and ajoined to the small village of Feldballe.
Just a little about Friland itself. Friland was founded in 2002 by a very warm openhearted and extremely interesting man called Steen Moeller. The basic idea from what I know of Friland is that those who wish to join the community are encouraged to build inexpensive or almost mortgage free homes, to be environmentally friendly and create as little waste as possible. This as I have seen from my visits there is achieved by most, and those living there really try to think of these ideals in their everyday life. Things like solar showers, rain water recycling, waste water management are normal for the residents and for me personally this was very inspiring. I felt Frilanders had really made that conscious decision in their lives to make this happen and now it was a normal everyday thing for them to do.

Our hosts:
Our hosts and good friends where Lars Keller and Jo Morandin, with their 2 very beautiful children Asger and Jamilla. They made us feel as if we were at home away from home and their organization and Networking plus their patience and person skills are second to none.

The workshop:
For the workshop we had this amazing crew who came together from various parts of Europe. There was Kuba ( a Straw bale designer) and Hannah (amazing cook and joke teller) both from Czech Republic, Tom a helpex and extremely hard working funny Welshman who we really enjoyed being around, he also had an amazing knowledge of plants and there medicinal uses. Anna another helpex from Denmark, of course Lars and Jo, Asger and Jamilla our fantastic host family, and ourselves, Micheal Cronin (Irish living in Finland), Charlie Jespergaard(who is actually Danish but living in Finland), and me Paul Lynch also Irish and living in Finland. We work together here in a company called The Natural Building Company. Check us out on www.naturalbuilding.fi. I also brought along my 9 year old daughter Milla for the fun. We cannot though forget the 20 Danish, really energetic, enthusiastic trainee teacher students who came for the course. They were well.., great.

Micheal contemplatng

Hannah

Kuba with Carolina from Friland and her son.

Lars(right), Jo and Soran, in the house

And of course Tom

Charlie(left) and I

We arrived on the Monday night by Ferry from Sweden and set to work immediately on Tuesday Morning. The course, was to be held on the Saturday and Sunday and we had a lot to do. We began by looking at the first plan for a nearly 60m2 house that Lars and Jo had put together, which was sketched out on an A4. We discussed the different ideas and objectives for the house which would be used as a guest house/library/office, and we then split up into our various groups. Micheal and Charlie tackled the foundation, made up of packed mussel shells, a first for them and quite challenging to compact.


The building site, and the mussel shells

Kuba and I went straight for getting a full detailed plan drawn up for the building and started by checking the bales which came in at whacking 275 x 55 x 85 and were to be positioned standing up which was a first for us and exciting to try. As we were to discover this turned out to be a big challenge. This method was designed by Steen and his idea (which is logical) is that this would save time and material. Could be created in a factory setting, therefore making the process cheaper for the customer and more profitable for the contractor. Could it work?? We were about to find out.
We then went on to check the windows and doors (which were bought or donated, I can't remember), took measurements of the roof trusses (bought from and old barn that was dismantled) and constructed a list of all the materials needed for the project. We set up the various areas, one for customizing the bales, another for keeping the tools under, and chainsaw area for cutting. The days were long, exciting and fun and the evenings just as fun. The weekend came fast.

Milla my daughter lying on one of the huge bales

After experimenting with the bales and compressing them in different ways we discovered that we would have to customize each one and came up with a method as shown in this picture below.

Milla and Jamilla on a compressed bale

By Saturday we had the foundation, base plate and wall plates all ready, all the materials on site and all areas fully equipped. We had an intense course with a lot work, brilliant organization, beautiful food and amazing bonding between everyone involved. On Saturday evening it rained lightly a few times and was really beautiful on the Sunday. As soon as we finished putting the trusses up the weather started to turn and it poured rain for the next few days, but the bales were well covered the night before, which to me is a good sign that the Straw god was on our side....

Base plate

Wallplate going on and being insulated

Last roof truss goes on

The following courses:
The following month the same students returned to work some more on the house and installed the windows, doors, ceilings, roof underlay, and even got a lot of claywork done. There are more courses to follow to keep the project moving along.