Why are we waiting oh why are waiting oh wh-y are we wai-aiting it's be-een too lon g

Yup it's been far to long since I updated the blog. And I'll leave out the really boring bits which  means there's not much left. Suffice to say that, other than the electrician making a start and me fiddling about with the ladder boxing that the bales sit on, not much has transpired. Ok a bit more than that but pretty boring.
However! things are on the move again with the delivery of our kaolin clay this morning (23rd of Feb) after extensive efforts prising it free from a local open cut mine and I don't mean the physical effort just the to-ing and fro-ing type to get things happening but I have to say the guys at the mine have expressed a lot of interest in our project AND (see it's a big and so it means a lot to us) the straw bales are set to start arriving today, or maybe tomorrow, just as I start three weeks leave from work. A lot of people may be familiar with the phrase in Australia "knock off work to carry bricks" which is a bit like "bus drivers holiday" ..you get the drift. Still that's the game we signed up for so...
Alright so what do we do with the clay then? I hear you say. Good question. Well it's like this, there is quite a lot of it,15 tonne or so today with more to follow, and it's a little bit to lumpy the way it is so I have to mill it down to <5mm, you could getaway with a bit larger, and then it gets blended in the ratio of 1 part clay to 2 parts sand. Then it gets mixed into a suitable slurry to spray onto the walls, floor, dogs, tools ,and slow moving helpers.
Right too easy then. Well I hope so. The 1:2 clay sand  ratio is an estimate at this point and the the sand is a variable to think about as is the amount of water and what colour socks you might be wearing. What kind of sand? Well it can contain a lot of it's own clay which is fine or it could be washed and it might be coarse and it might be fine. By the way a fine, washed sand is ideal to mix with your lime putty as excess clay will cause a lime render to crack..I know cos I tried it. But the washed sand in the lime seems great.
 What's that gotta do with earthern renders? Well it depends what you've got and how much experimentation you want to try. Our local sub soil is a red, iron rich, variety which is rotten for earthern render and mud bricks but great for growing things in the dark topsoil on top of it (but think about the pH and what you're growing). Also what kind of clay is in the sand you're considering. Clay cracks on drying due, in part, to shrinkage rates so that's main reason sand is added which follows that if your sand is clayey like packing or builders sand you might want to adjustcthe ratio a bit and if it's a coarse washed sand or a fine washed plasterer' sand then you  might wind up slightly at the other end of the scale. That's half the fun isn't it? It's why we do it y'know to muck around with a flexible medium and get covered in crap. But once the ratio is sorted I don't intend to deviate too much from it.
So here's what Ill do; I'll get three different type of sand and mix the same clay sand ratio and plaster some bales up and post their photo's on the blog...you guy's can name them if you like. Just give me little preparation time to do this as I haven't prepared them earlier like the t.v. chefs.
Let's not forget, though, that the render goes on in layers so, arguably, the first ratio could be different from the final ratio.

In the meantime a friend sent me her impression of an artists impression of a straw bale house.

Our house once the straw gets here.