Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
One of the leading straw-bale contractors in the Austin area, a former
English teacher, pointed out that explaining things in great detail in work-
shops is counterproductive, stating that people learn more by asking ques-
tions as needed to accomplish the task they have undertaken:
I do know some other workshop leaders and they have their theoretical things and
they go into tremendous detail. I come from a background where I taught English
before [and was exposed to] a lot of study with learning mechanism. And you
know, the one that has stuck clearly is never try to teach anybody with three things,
they'll never get it. . . . Kind of what we do is people asking for more, more, more
information. And we just kind of make some assumptions about how much they
can actually take in. . . .We don't just sit there and feed them, when we [work out]
what's the reason, [it allows people] to grow. So at our workshops we do very short
introductions, we tell everybody,“Hey, there's lots of this we need to get done, you
know, don't worry, you know, you don't have to break your back or anything like
that, there's lots of us, let's just have fun. And that's [how] as you go along . . . and
stop [to explain] little itty bitty pieces, you know. Anyone with half a brain could
understand if they paid attention in the right way, [but] not trying to learn it all at
the same time.
This statement matches my own experience. By the time I finished two
days on the first site, I knew that felt paper had to be put under all the bale
walls and window frames to wick moisture away from the bales, and that
this was particularly important under windows not only because they were
a potential source of moisture but also because bales could better stand to
get wet on their long-stalk sides (where moisture would just run off) than
on their cut-stalk side (where moisture might trickle down the stalk to the
interior of the bale and start decomposition). Since I had helped roll that
black paper for every wall of the house at the first site, novice that I was, I
was the one who noticed the omission of paper under the kitchen window
frame at the second site. I learned that a bale that was unusually warm or
discolored should be discarded because rot was already underway. Observ-
ing the architect and owner discuss window size and placement, I learned
about bale aesthetics, that single- and multiple-bale course heights were
used to set window placement, and that windows should be high and nar-
row rather than broad to preserve the integrity of a load-bearing wall. I
became familiar with new tools and with old tools used in new ways.A cap
placed over the rebar made it easier to hit with a hammer; a small metal sign
made a “bale horn” to ease slipping a custom bale into a tight spot; a weed
whip became a bale wall trimmer to even up the surface for plastering. I
