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Differences in plasterwork for Strawbale building in South Africa vs. The US?

The US strawbale builders typically spray on their plaster, as their labour is extremely expensive and they do not have a tradition of doing manual plaster work. Whereas our labour is cheap and we have a well developed tradition of hand plastering. So we don’t spray on the plaster or use chicken mesh and have developed a much more sturdy, inexpensive and fast way of doing the plaster work than spraying it by using a pre-coating method.

We would also recommend that you do not use a cement based plaster for straw bale construction, as these tend to trap the moisture in the walls and hence have been found to be much more prone to causing problems with damp. We would recommend that you rather stick with earth and lime based plasters.

I would strongly recommend that you either purchase our lime dung plaster and natural paint recipe manual perhaps and most certainly one of our straw bale info or construction manuals. Better still I suggest book yourself on one of our 2-day straw bale and earth building workshops, where you will receive the most up to date theoretical training as well as hands on instruction on a live project as well as a free lime dung plaster and straw bale construction manual. We also offer a time based consultancy service as well as a full architectural service. Join our facebook page or visit our website regularly for more information on a workshop nearest to you.