Читать книгу More Straw Bale Building - Peter Mack - Страница 68

Once you’ve bought your bales, you must decide where to put them. If possible, try to leave the bales in their storage barn until you actually need them. Moving and restacking bales is a lot of work, and can be minimized by having the bales arrive at your construction site very close to the time of the wall raising. If the bales arrive early, they must be stored.

Our favorite means of storing bales onsite is to have them delivered in a transport trailer. You can have the trailer delivered to your site and pay a small rental fee to have it remain there until you need the bales. This keeps your bales high and dry, and if the trailer has been parked close to the building site, you just have to swing the doors open and unload directly to the walls. A standard sized trailer can hold up to 520 well-stacked bales, which is usually enough for houses up to 2000 square feet. Special bale trailers (used by hay brokers) hold up to 720 bales, are low to the ground, and are accessible on three sides for easy unloading.

In the previous version of this book, we gave instructions for storing bales on your building site. Creating a proper bale stack, one that will stay dry and stable, is more work than we’d recommend taking on unless you have no other option. Outdoor stacks must be elevated from the ground with a moisture barrier under-neath.

3.6: A transport trailer is a great way to move and store bales. The trailer can be rented and left on your site until you need the straw, eliminating one round of loading and unloading.

3.7: From the back of a transport trailer onto an elevator and immediately into the wall: the best way to do it!

The stack should be made with a peak at the top to encourage water runoff, and well-secured, waterproof coverings must be in place. We have yet to see an outdoor stack that hasn’t lost some bales to moisture, and they have definitely been responsible for some builders losing sleep on windy rainy nights.

Post and beam builders may be able to stack their bales under the completed roof of their building. Remember that bales must still be elevated and protected from water and dampness on or in the floor.