Products and Services

Consulting

Lance has an extensive knowledge of working with strawbale as a building medium and can provide consulting packages for designers, builders and owners.  His consultancy will assist with

  • Demystifying the building regulation and approval processes for strawbale
  • Preliminary design considerations
  • Construction techniques and viable options
  • Technical support and instruction during design process
  • Inspection of work in progress, written reports and remedial, rectification steps documented

 

Building

Our partnership G Thomas and L Kairl Builders is able to contract for full construction of your

  • New home
  • Extension
  • Studio
  • Feature garden walls

We will consider full contract construction in the Adelaide Hills, southern suburbs, Fluerieu Peninsula and Kangaroo Island.  In some instances full construction in other areas will be seriously considered.

Assisting Owner Builders

Lance and his team can provide support during the whole process of your strawbale building project (see Building Works Supervisor), or just part of it.
Lance can provide a getting started package, (usually his team for 3 days) with occasional ongoing support. 
He can provide a quoted cost to supply, install and render strawbale walls and have the owner’s work with him and his team to reduce the cost.  The cost of formulating any detailed quote is charged.
Alternatively, Lance is able to provide a rough cost estimate and work actively with the owners to install and render the strawbale walls.

Contracting

Lance offers contract wall construction and sub contracting to other builders or owner builders.  He can supply and install strawbale walls and render them anywhere in South Australia (also Queensland, other states will be considered).
Some of the projects that he has subcontracted on are

  • Houses-including Adelaide, Loxton, Murray Bridge and Aldinga
  • Home extensions-Adelaide, Gawler
  • Commercial construction-high school eco science building, bio dynamic winery
  • Feature garden walls-Goolwa Jekajeri Park, Murray Bridge Fraser Park School

Rendering

Lance has developed a pump for spray rendering.  It is designed for use with small aggregate mortars, plaster, mud and other thick viscous materials. It enables render to be applied evenly and quickly to strawbales.  Lance offers a spray rendering service for strawbale walls.  He and the team spray render 1st and 2nd coats of strawbale walls, patching and shaping render to get the desired shape.  Hand rendering for final coat is normal, for some small projects we hand render all 3 coats.
Lance and his team offer you the choice of

  • Rendering all coats
  • Spray rendering 1st coat only
  • Spray rendering1st and 2nd coats
  • Assisting with preperation for final coat rendering and or
  • Final coat rendering only

(Some owners assist in the rendering process and we are happy to accommodate this.)

  

Spray rendering 1st and 2nd coat 
Hand rendering final coat

                                                                             

Watch us in action on YOU TUBE

Workshops

These are educational teaching events run over 2-3 days, (usually a weekend) with theory and practical sessions.  We can run a workshop in conjunction with your project and it is usual to expect a section of the strawbale wall project to be constructed and some 1st coat rendering by hand.  We invite an engineer and an architect to these workshops who have both worked extensively with strawbale buildings, and they present sections of our program.  Some of the topics covered in the workshops include

  • History of strawbale building
  • Viable options and techniques of wall construction
  • Installation of electrical/plumbing services
  • Details for door/window openings
  • Render types

These workshops are fully insured and structured to maximise your learning.  We thoroughly recommend that anyone wanting to be hands on in any way with their strawbale project, attend a workshop.

Workshop participants constructing walls  
  Developing rendering skills
              

Wall raising events

We can assist you and your invited family and friends to spend one or more days building the strawbale walls of your project.  Lance and his team will plan this with you to ensure there are adequate tools and equipment, and a number of skilled people to facilitate the process.  We limit numbers on wall raising events to ensure construction is orderly and safe.  There is no teaching instruction component in this.

Building works supervisor

Lance is a registered building works supervisor and is qualified to sign documents required for Certificate of Occupancy and Council Request Form 19.
In the role of building works supervisor he can inspect work done at the completion of each stage of building, notify defects and rectification if required, and sign off each stage of the work.  He is able to guide you to ensure that work on your project meets the requirements of the Building Codes of Australia, Australian standards and the approved building plans.  It is a requirement in South Australia for owner builders to have a building works supervisor, or equivalent.