After Ecobuild, which was Early March, when we met Barbara Jones from Strawworks and her colleague, heard her at the seminar and saw her demonstrate, we had pretty much decided to go with a Straw Bale Building with Barbara as our Designer. We are hoping to do a community build, and run courses in straw bale building, clay and lime rendering and so on.
The Society ‘s council agreed the decision in principle, and there are some preliminaries that need to be completed before we formally sign a contract; at the time of writing (22 April) these are in hand.
We needed to finalise a “design brief” which the Planning Group has now done, and that ‘s gone to Barbara – she will base her fee estimate on it.
so, hopefully it will be all systems go for a straw bale building …. we need to get a planning application in in July to “benefit” from the fee we paid last year; then during the winter we will be able apply for grants and do final preparation, commencing a straw bale building in the spring of 2014 ….
updates here, as they happen (as I remember to put them up!)
The Bluebell Centre - a New Education Centre for Perivale Wood Local Nature Reserve 