Guardian photo of bale based SIP in factory production.The British are baling, according to their leading non-News International paper.
The local government in Lincolnshire is building bale-based social housing. And a university research program has come up with a bale-based SIP (structural insulated panel) which can be pre-manufactured in a temporary factory, saving what I imagine is a good deal of hand labor.
The main problem in making a bale wall is getting the clay stucco (AKA "adobe") surface smooth and solid. Hand labor is usually the solution, and bale-builders have been know to have stucco parties and picnics where a lot of friends descend on the building site to lend a hand.
I did the stucco for most of our own bale house myself, and the biggest energy-waster was getting the very large quantities of stucco material up the various steps and stairs and ladders. It's surprising how little coverage you get from a three-gallon bucket of clay stucco. It took me most of a summer to get it done, and I finished up needing a cement mixer to get the right consistency from the very mixed consistency of the Maine native clay deposits I was using.
I expect this is a good deal quicker to achieve in a factory where machine tools like a stucco sprayer or a cement mixer might be used. You'd need to use a Lull (extended arm fork lift) to lift the finished bale-SIPs into position in the final building, but those are in common use for construction projects. The Terra Haus panels were lifted into place with a Lull.
Now, before anyone gets all excited and wants me to start a bale SIP factory in Unity or any such thing, let me remind you that straw is not grown in large quantities in mid-central Maine. You can't use hay bales -- the moisture content is too high.
We'd have to import barley straw from Aroostook County.
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