straw bale project at Joes slide show on Flickr

This is an ongoing project creating a sitting area and rain water harvesting feature, while increasing the privacy of the front sun room.

The yard is full of gravel so we are using that for footers and the soil has a lot of clay so we are using that for cob.

Footer is hardware cloth cut in to 6″ strips, staked up and wired to rebar and filled with gravel from the yard

The Straw bales are spiked with rebar down in to the gravel footer, then sewn together with bailing wire to bond the whole structure together. All the gaps and seams are packed with chips of straw or loose straw.

Core form of straw bales is anchored and sewn together ready for cob.

First Layer of filler cob applied where the bench meets the wall