[Strawbale] 2x2" galvanized welded wire mesh for SB house

[Brian Zimbelman]

I had never thought of using welded wire fencing for the sides of the
strawbale. I assume you sew it into the bales then? I mean pinning it
wouldn't do much good structurally. Do you also staple/nail it to the
post & beam structure? Are you putting it on the inside, outside or
both?

It was mentioned that the building inspector accepted this in lue of 3
rebar per bale. Does that mean you are not pinning the bales at all? I
pinned my bales with 2 bamboo posts each. Already had the roof up, for
the top row, just pinned from below at a slight angle. Not perfect, but
fairly stable. Then whenever a bale came into contact with either the
posts or beams, I tied them to the wood structure. Sorry, no load
bearing structures allowed by code in NM. I found the structure was very
solid this way.

Finally sewed chicken wire onto the bales mainly to make it much easier
to stucco. I wasn't going to use the chicken wire, just stucco to the
bales, but I did an experiment, and found that the stucco adhears to the
chicken wire much much easier then it does directly to the straw, and
since I'm fairly new to stucco work, I decided to make it easy on myself
(sort of).

I do have some 4x4 welded wire laying around with nothing in particular
for it to do. I wish I had thought about this earlier. There are some
places where it's structure would help to make everything go together
much better. Even with sewing it in, I could see the rigidity of the
welded wire helping with certain shaped areas when it comes to making
something to put the stucco onto.

-- bz

-----Original Message-----
From: strawbale-bounces at listserv.repp.org
[mailto:strawbale-bounces at listserv.repp.org] On Behalf Of
Raftercat5 at aol.com
Sent: Friday, October 12, 2007 5:19 AM
To: blakeforrest at gmail.com; strawbale at listserv.repp.org
Subject: Re: [Strawbale] 2x2" galvanized welded wire mesh for SB house

my hubby is gathering things we'll need when we do the  strawbale  part.

He's 
>been searching online for the  2x2" galvanized welded wire mesh  to put
on 
the
>strawbales  (we're doing a post and beam).


Whatever for???  Most people  think that any mesh whatsoever is wasted 
because of the stucco's tendency to  stick to the straw.  I also built
a P&B and went "overboard"  and used regular stucco mesh.  Who is
telling you to use 2x2 welded  wire mesh?

However, wherever bales meet wood on the P&B structure,  but sure to 
install expanded metal (blood mesh) that spans the  dissimilar
sub-surface.  This will prevent cracking at those  junctions.

regards,
dion

Dion:  The reason for the 2x2 welded wire mesh (galvanized) is for
sheer.  
We are located in S. Carolina, and sometimes get hurricanes  here.
Better safe 
than sorry.  The 'blood mesh' (expanded metal lath)  you talk of will be
used 
around windows and over any wood that will be  covered with tar paper.
We'll 
be using burlap where we cut out the notches  for the poles to stuff
straw 
behind, and for holes, gaps, etc. 
We found the 2x2 wire, btw, at Farm Tek.  Much cheaper!
- Kathy



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