Published on
November 24, 2008 in
Family.
So we have a new little Iz monster roaming around the house so I thought it might be time to post something on how we are trying to make this happy addition a green addition
First off, the big question, cloth or disposable. And the answer is both… We got some G Diapers from Laine`s sister and we used those in combination with 7th Generation chlorine free disposables. The G diaper system is great but you need at least 2-3 of the starter kits to be practical and Isobel has already grown out of the fist size set we have. We are looking into other cloth diapers and have gotten some good advice from friends with newborns as well, but the 7th Generation diapers will fill the gap.
As far as wipes go, we decided to forgo the wet overpackaged, over scented and over processed commercial wipes and simply use reusable towels (commonly referred to as J cloths, but we have a different brand) and wet them in warm water before using them. Iz likes it better when they are warm and we just launder them with the rest of her stuff, and they are good as new! We found the packaged wipes gave her bum rashes more often.
We also used almost exclusively hand me down clothes for her with a few good “dress up” outfits we bought just for her. Hand me down toys and mats and playpens have also been a blessing as well.
If you have any good tips of green baby care, or questions, let me know!
Published on
November 1, 2008 in
House.
We’ve started doing interior stucco and almost immediately ran into a few stumbling blocks. Number one was the fact that without horse manure in the stucco the mixer didn’t do as good a job mixing the product. Apparently the manure was acting to keep the clay in the mix from clumping together and when we tried to mis the stucco without it all we got was a mixer full of wet sand and hard clay lumps. We would then have to mix the resulting mess by hand, essentially making the mixer useless.
The second issue was the straw bales were starting to mold after we applied slip to the wall. This was much more worrisome than the clay not mixing in. This was the inside of our house where our new born was going to be living and breathing, with mold on the walls! We theorize that there must be mold spores on the straw and that when the wet slip was sprayed onto the walls it gave the spores the moisture needed to bloom. And because we were spraying inside, and much thicker than we did outside it was taking a long time to dry. Laine did some internet researching and we decided to try spraying the walls with pure white vinegar. This seemed to kill the blooms and inhibit the mold from coming back. We also got two dehumidifiers to run full time inside and keep the wood stove going round the clock to help dry things out.
The questions remained as to how we would stop the mold from happening in the rest of the house, and how we were to mix the stucco without having to go back to using horse manure in the mix (which nobody relished the thought of.) The answer to both turned out to be lime. We had switched our clay finish coat to a lime/sand render and still had lots of hydrated lime putty left over, we added about 1 part lime to our 3 parts sand and three parts clay discovery coat mix and found that if we mixed the putty in with the water it actually coated the clay and kept it from clumping! It also is quite caustic and should inhibit any mold growth. We also started mixing vinegar into the water we dampen the clay slip with before applying the discovery coat and will be adding some diluted lime putty to the remaining slip we need to spray.
When you are building a strawbale home for the first time, these are the sorts of unexpected snags you run into every step of the way. I am not exaggerating when I say we have had to overcome a seemingly impossible problem with each step int he building of our home. And yet we have overcome each of them and learned from them. Whether we will ever put those lessons to good use by building another strawbale structure seems unlikely now, but we certainly will be able to give some good advice to those who may need it!
