Rising up on Trinity Rise

It was always our plan to build with load-bearing straw walls. Our design team at Straw Works still believe it would be possible, but our Engineer at Renaissance has said “No.” Apparently, the 10m span across the hall would be too wide to support the upper floor and roof.  Instead, Helen, our engineer has designed…

Last week GEA came and dug four boreholes to check what our ground is like.  As expected, there were traces of building rubble in the first metre, but below that was solid clay. The company are now doing a closer sample analysis back in the lab, and will also return to check the water levels…

Becoming a Bale-Builder for Holy Trinity’s Neighbourhood Hub couldn’t be simpler. The cost of a delivered bale of straw is about £4.00 and to cover the total cost of our building we need the equivalent of about 95,000 of them! To be a Bale-Builder, just decide how many bales you can contribute – it may…

An average 85m2 UK home of brick and concrete is said to release 68 tonnes CO2 in construction. For a building like ours of 643m2, we would expect to release something like 450 tonnes with conventional construction. Using Alternative Construction the picture is more like this (from the ground up): Crushed Concrete MOT Type-1:  Waste…

£348,000 so far!  Our initial fundraising aim was £380,000 so that is an incredible achievement – 92% of the target raised! Many thanks to all our supporters. Unfortunately, costs have also risen.  A while back, we revised our fundraising aim to £460,000, which puts us back down to 75% achievement, but in fact the target will…

On 14th June at we’ll be making a 2 metre long model of the main part of our Straw Bale annex at Holy Trinity School Fair.  Those helping build the model will be able to see how a straw bale building is constructed and learn something about the advantages. The “bales” will be made from…