Occombe Farm Straw Bale Building

2008-10-07T12:15:00.003+01:00

We now have a completed structure. the walls are all rendered with Lime render, the internal works are practically complete and we now only have some minor works to carry out to complete the project. Decorating the inside and out has started and is well under way, we only need to cover the tyres with a timber skirt and install the rain water goods to be able to say the building is finally complete.

Roof is almost finished

2008-06-17T08:35:00.002+01:00

We are finally in the dry with the roof light recently installed and the last of the roof timber going on now. We have started to render inside to enable us to finish all internal finishes. All windows and doors are in with some small alterations to be made. We now need to take the scaffolding down to enable us to complete some external works. the final push continues.

The big push continues

2008-05-16T17:31:00.006+01:00

We are now working on lots of build elements concurrently to try to bring the build in on time (and before the students head for the beach for the summer). This means we are working on boarding out inside as well as installing electrical trunking whilst fitting the windows and installing the larch boards to the roof outside. The lime render needs to be started soon in order for it to cure intime to decorate before the end of term. All being well we are still on target to complete before the end of term but we cannot afford any more hold ups.

A big push now needed to complete all areas

2008-04-30T08:44:00.003+01:00

We are now at a stage with the build that requires a big push in all areas to bring the completion in before all of the students finish for their summer break. This means we will be working in several areas at once. We are currently expecting the main delivery of larch to complete the roof. Along with working on the internal works such as floor joists, electrical works and plasterboarding. All steels are now in place and the windows are due in very soon so that we can begin to render with lime and finish the building. Before the fermacell plasterboard can go up with have filled the roof with thermafleece (Lambswool) insulation and lined it with a vapour barrier. All drainage is in apart from final connections when the scaffolding comes down. So over the next seven weeks we will be looking to finish the building to a point that the trust can fit it out to their own requirements.

Roof is progressing well

2008-03-28T11:44:00.003Z

The main roof structure is now in place apart from some steels which will be installed over the coming week. We can now start to weather proof the building in order to start work inside. The main students used in the construction of the roof is a third year group tutored by steve who have produced some very good work to add to their college assessments. As the building takes shape and we can now start fitting it out, pressure for the building to be completed also starts to build. Timing is critical especially for the rendering of the straw as rendering too early before compression is complete will result in the bond being broken between the render and the straw. Rendering too late and we will not have time for the lime to cure and the students to carry out the work as they start to complete their work at college and leave for their summer break. I am sure anybody visiting the site will agree the building is starting to look impressive in its surroundings at occombe farm.

Roof work begins

2008-03-12T09:44:00.002Z

It is now time to start to push on with the roof work but recent weather has slowed up progress. although the storms have not affected the building structurally I am unable to work on the roof if there is a threat of rain as the bales are still vulnerable and require constant protection. This coupled with a sequencing issue regarding the installation of structural steel works before we can complete the structure is giving me a headache. The students are still gaining valuable experiance with a whole group of third year students constructing the main roof structure with assistance from their tutor Steve.

Walls are completed and compression begins

2008-02-15T08:53:00.003Z

After a significant push by students and all involved in the project, plus a kind spell of good weather we have managed to bring the project back on programme. That being with the walls completed and under compression for the half term break. We even had students assisting the farmer to restring some bales on his farm as a significant number of the original bales were deemed unsuitable due to them getting wet. Again student accuracy amazed me again with the top ring beam being exactly square and exactly plumb over the bottom beam on all four sides. This is with a level of tolerance within 5 mm. Considering we have been using a building product as natural in size and shape as a straw bale. these pictures show the top beam in place and being staked down to the bales below. The next stage is to allign all of the bales with the beams and compree the straw over a period of a week or two. This will then be ready to install the roof.

The walls are growing...

2008-02-10T23:03:00.000Z

Good progress is being made inbetween the showers. A few bales have got wet and have had to be discarded and some replacements will be made up as quickly as possible. Nick and the students aim to get the upper ring beam in place and ratcheted down before the half term break - which starts in five days time...

Earlier this week Occombe hosted a visit by 20 farm shop operators from across the country who were attending a workshop organised by FARMA (the Farm Retail and Markets Association). The workshop was for people to find out how Occombe Farm won Best Newcomer of the Year 2008 in the annual FARMA Awards. There was great interest in the straw bale building and Nick gave a tour for the group. One delegate has gone away vowing to build the first straw bale farm shop in the country!

Wind and rain try to disrupt progress

2008-01-31T10:25:00.000Z

The dark picture is due to the weather not the time of day, it shows the difficulty we face with covering over all of the straw each day with tarpaulins and braces to prevent the straw walls collapsing or getting wet.

Straw walls are on the up

2008-01-30T09:22:00.001Z

Here are some images of the straw walls being constructed on site. It shows each stage from the first bale being positioned to the hazel stakes being driven in. Progress on site has been rapid with the spell of good weather helping us (for the moment). We currently have five courses of bales in place with two to go, this will happen when the scaffolding has been erected.

Ring beam is almost in despite the weather

2008-01-15T09:31:00.000Z

Work is almost complete on the first ring beam so that the straw can be installed. Here you can see that we are using ratchet straps to bring the beam into square. We checked the diagonal measurements which are within 10mm of each other so already a very good level of accuracy is being achieved by the college students. All carpentry students so far have been 16 or 17 years old so this does bode well for a quality workforce for the future.

We had great difficulty lifting the sections of beam over the tie down bolts but with a bit of persistance and and a few well directed hammer blows all is in place and located in the correct position over the tyres.

600 pointy sticks arrive!

2008-01-13T23:37:00.000Z

On a soaking wet day last Friday Brian Williamson and his apprentice Ruth delivered their load of pointed hazel rods, which will be used to spike the straw bales together. The rods are superbly uniform and very smart - shame they will be hidden inside the straw once the building is up!

150 bales have also arrived on site and the walls will start to go up this coming week.

Carpentry students get stuck in

2008-01-09T11:10:00.000Z

Carpentry students begin the construction of the ring beam by cutting 18mm ply wood into strips ready to make a beam for setting the straw bales onto the foundation of tyres. These foundation students had never used this type of powered skill-saw before so they were a little apprehensive, but by the end of the day 88 strips had been cut to the correct width.

As you can see we have also erected a temporary shelter to keep out the worst of the weather.

The next stage for the carpenters is to screw it all together to form the beam as you can see here.

Progress with tyres

2007-12-20T16:15:00.000Z

Over the past week or so we have been diligently filling the tyres with 10mm chippings, the majority of the filling happened during two days on site with large groups of students working in teams to shovel and compact the stones. I required the assistance of another college staff member (Mike Prosser) to supervise these larger groups. we are now almost ready for the straw walls to go up.

You can also see in the background of this picture that we now have a site office and canteen so that we can establish the required welfare facilities on site. Untill now we have been sharing the occombe farm buildings to satisfy the CDM regulations. We can now be self sufficient on site without interfering with farm operations.

Filling tyres with stone

2007-12-20T16:08:00.000Z

We are now in the position to fill all of the tyres as we now have enough to complete the foundations. The method we employed to ensure the tyres are full with chippings is to lever the inner edge of the tire with a pick axe and ram the chippings in with a blunt object (stick). We will let the chippings settle for a couple of weeks (over the christmas period) and then we will settle them more using a plate compactor topping up the tyres as required.

Things take shape

2007-12-12T23:14:00.000Z

Here's a lovely drawing that our architect, Mark Ledgard at Stratton & Holborow has done, to show a little better what the building will look like.

Car tyres are now arriving from our friends at ATS in all the towns hereabouts, who have been collecting the right size tyres for our foundations. We have around 130 of the 180 we need and the students have been setting them out on site. It doesn't look very rural at the moment!

Other highlights - we have commissioned local Devon woodsman Brian Williamson to prepare the 570 pointed hazel stakes we will use to pin the straw bales together, and he's started work already on this, delivery expected early January when we will start on the walls. Here's a picture of Brian's apprentice, Ruth, at work in the woods cutting the hazel rods.

Today a class of College students have had a straw-bale building course on site under Nick's tuition, as a dry run prior to the real build, and have also started fabricating the wall plate out of timber. This sits between the tyres and the straw and is used to anchor everything together.

A static caravan has been manoevred onto site today. Donated by Hoburne Holiday Park in Paignton, the caravan will act as the site office for the next few months, giving the students much-needed shelter and R&R facilities during the doubtless wet Devon winter that's to come.

2007-11-26T15:57:00.000Z

Students from the college carried out some new (to them) methods of working on site. One of these being the use of a power barrow. After some intensive training from the digger driver they were all given the opportunity to use the equipment to fill the foundations with crusher run stone. This was then spread and compacted in 150mm layers. It was good to see the students keen to get stuck in so that within the first week of operation on site the foundations were dug, lined with a geotextile material and filled to the correct level. The next stage of the job will be to locate the tires into position fill and compact them and prepare for the timber wall base plate. This stage will be carried out with the aid of the carpentry students.

2007-11-26T15:48:00.000Z

South Devon College students compacting stone in the foundations.

Tyres start to be laid out

2007-11-23T08:11:00.000Z

The tyres have been donated by local branch of ATS. We are using two sizes 175/65 R14 and 185/65 R14. There will be two rows stacked one on top of the other.

Foundations continued.

2007-11-14T18:23:00.000Z

Here you can see the the 2 trenches that cross the centre of the building.

Nick Cleasby project leader for South Devon College holds one of the steel rods that will pass up through the foundations, tyres and wooden base plate.

Foundations begun.

2007-11-13T19:36:00.001Z

Stone going in to foundations.

Dominic Acland, Tuesday 6 November 07

2007-11-06T20:38:00.000Z

We held our first "contract control" meeting today with the architectural team - Mark Ledgard and Jenny Parsons from Stratton & Holborow, Exeter - and Nick Cleasby, the Project Manager from South Devon College. "We" is me, Director of the Trust, and Justin Cox, Deputy Director and also Farm Manager. Julian Carnell, the Trust's Education Manager and the other key member of the team, couldn't make it along today.

The building site as the first layers are stripped off

The meeting lasted three hours as we went into every detail of the design to ensure we are clear about what's coming up. To bring you up to speed, so far we have cleared a level platform for the building, measuring around 10m x 10m square and Nick, with his students, has marked out the foundations according to the plans supplied by Jenny. Nick has recently been on a straw-bale building course run by the Dorset Centre for Rural Skills so, as the rest of us are straw-bale virgins, we listen to what he has to say with great respect.

We are using rammed stone foundations, around 1.2m deep and will need 34.2 cubic metres of stone. Then on top of the foundations will sit two courses of used car tyres filled with crushed stone to act as a damp-proof course and lift the bales off the ground. Stainless steel bars and plates set in the foundations, will anchor the wall-plate into the ground, to keep the building from flying off in a strong wind.

Next came the debate about what the tyres measure. The local ATS outlet is going to collect them for us and they are 185/65 R14s. We wrestle with it for a while until Justin gets up and goes out into the car park to crouch behind people's cars measuring their tyres. Lucky to escape without arrest he returns to tell us the average for an R14 is 570mm. So Jenny will factor that into her design and that will determine the exact dimensions for the foundations. As the digger is arriving on Monday to start to dig the foundations, and Nick needs to mark them out (again!) before Monday, she'll have to be quick. Nick has been to visit our bales, which have been made and are sitting in a barn in nearby Marldon, and Jenny is worried that they are slightly shorter than she had allowed. Nick is quite relaxed about it all though - he's been on the course and claims that the bales can easily be cut to size to fit whatever the main dimensions are.He is even rash enough to say that once we have got the ring-plate in over the tyres, the bale walls will go up in a matter of two days. We shall see.

Things are really going to start happening next week as the foundations should be completed by the end of the week. Then we hope to install the car tyres by early December, followed by the ring-plate, which is a timber base for the straw bales, to be pre-fabricated at the College and assembled on site. A Christmas break will give us all time to draw breath, before we get the straw bale walls up in January.

On the media front Mark Gilmartin, the Trust's IT expert, is setting up a time-lapse camera so we can make one of those speeded-up films of the whole build, and meanwhile the College's media department are going to make a documentary of the whole project. We'll post some of the pictures on this blog as we go, hope you find it interesting!

Introduction

2007-11-06T16:55:00.000Z

THE NEW OCCOMBE FARMING AND FOOD EDUCATION CENTRE
OPENING JUNE 2008

Why do we need a new centre?
When Occombe was opened in March 2006, we had to make compromises to fit everything in. Our vision is of a business with a heart, that is successful both educationally and commercially – and Occombe is well on the way to achieving this vision. But we need more space to do it in. At the moment, when school groups come to Occombe, we have to close half of the café, and the rest of the time the café shares the education space. For groups wanting to use the bakery, we can only hold around 15 children at a time, and we have to work amongst large-scale commercial production equipment. And holding adult education classes is really difficult too. Despite these problems, we are fully booked with school groups and we know the demand is there for us to expand.

A green building.
True to our mission to demonstrate techniques that will allow society to function without needless damage to the environment, we want the new building to have as small a carbon footprint as possible.

no cement will be used in it
the building will sit on used car tyres as a damp-proof course
the walls will be of straw bales, plastered with lime mortar
the roof and floor boarding will be made of larch harvested from our own woodlands here in Torbay

The new centre will form a single classroom, housing a learning kitchen big enough to teach a class of 30, plus the computer suite and IT facilities that are currently in the café.

A learning project.
We are very proud to be working with the Construction Department at South Devon College on this project. The department is a Centre of Vocational Excellence and it will use the construction of this building as the first “Construction in the Community” project the College has ever undertaken. The College has won funding from the Learning and Skills Council to provide tuition and project management so that students will build the new centre and learn sustainable construction skills in the process.

We aim to start work on the foundations in November and will be building the straw bale walls in January (pray for good weather!); in February we’ll get the roof on and from then on it’s the internal fit-out, plastering, wiring, plumbing etc. All the work will be carried out by students under proper supervision, as part of their course work.

Funding.
The new centre is being funded entirely through a grant from an anonymous charitable trust, which is paying for the materials used. The Learning and Skills Council is funding the College’s input, and the students are all working as volunteers. Our deepest thanks go to all those involved.

Find out more. Go to www.occombe.org.uk