Monitoring Ridge Winery
The Ridge Winery building near Healdsburg, California, is probably the largest straw bale structure in the world. It has rice bale walls up to 23 feet high, , coatings of many different types of earthen and lime plasters, and many different moisture loading conditions (such as barrel rooms maintained at a high humidity and cool temperature next to hot, dry outside air). We installed temperature & moisture sensors in 60 wall locations which are wired to a microprocessor accessible by Dr. John Straube via modem. Dr. Straube is monitoring conditions in the wall, and will issue an interim report and analysis in June.
Moisture and Thermal Conditions for Degradation of Rice Straw, 12/10/2003
Matt Summers at the University of California Davis School of Agricultural Engineering is completing a Phd thesis on straw degradation. This work consistsof isolating identical samples of rice and wheat straw under controlled conditions of temperature and humidity, then monitoring decay as evidenced by carbon dioxide production. This gives us baseline information about conditions under which straw will "go off", in the parlance of straw bale building. Wheat straw data will be available in early 2004 for comparison against performance of rice straw and hay.
Future work at UC Davis will identify the specific biological organisms (e.g. mold spores) whose activity constitutes what we call decay. EBNet will also report that work as it is published.
Moisture properties of straw and plaster/straw assemblies
Tests individual bales of straw, or plastered samples of straw, for capillarity (tendency to wick water up or sideways), permeability (tendency to allow migration of water), and sorption isotherms (ability to hold quantities of water like a sponge).