Hi Stef,
Anne articulates one strategy—buy lower cost tools. You could also plan to buy most or all of the tools you need to do the job efficiently, then
sell them when you’re done. I have been satisfied with some (not all) Harbor Freight tools I used; my impression is that name brand tools hold their value better if you want to resell them.
You might break this down into phases, e.g. tools for framing/roofing, bale stacking, plaster preparation, plastering, placing earth floors, etc. I'm going to list a lot of tools below--you can do without some of them if you have
enough time and
energy to use the alternatives. A hundred years ago homes were built without any or very few power tools—carpenters showed up to a job site with a box or cart that contained a hand saw for ripping and one for cross cuts, a hammer or two, mallet/chisels, a drill brace and set of bits, a level, a few hand planes, a framing square, a string, a pencil. Maybe a few saw horses. When I build furniture in my shop I avoid power tools if I can. Pleasant work done more safely and quietly. And slowly. It takes much, much longer to produce anything.
While you might need something like a hammer during any one of the construction steps above, you’ll mostly use a hammer for framing. The same will be true for tools like a long level, or drill/driver.
Also, some tools are easy to share—like a job-site table saw, or chop saw, reciprocating saw, jig saw, or hammer drill. With other tools it’s better if everyone on the crew has their own, e.g., safety glasses, gloves, and other basic tools.
Framing. This is what most people on a framing crew have when they frame a house (straw bale or other): safety glasses, hearing protection, dust mask, gloves, tool belt, framing hammer, tape measure, utility knife, 6” square, catspaw, chisel. You can imagine the inefficiency of constantly sharing these back-and-forth if you’re working as a team! Most also have their own circular saw and drill/driver.
The crew often shares 6’, 4’, and 2’ levels, a portable table saw, portable miter chop saw, compressor with 100’ hose (2), power cord for compressor, nail guns for various framing nails (2), reciprocating saw and a variety of blades for
cutting wood, nails (correcting mistakes), several drills/drivers and set of drill and river bits, a power plane for making the best of crowned, cupped, or twisted lumber, socket wrench and set for tightening anchor bolts, a couple of sets of saw horses, hammer drill.
You don’t mention what kind of roof you’ll install. Different roof materials need different tools, e.g. metal roofs need metal snips and metal brakes, and attach with screws while composite roofs need a sharp utility knife to cut and install with roofing nails.
Although most people don’t think of a shade/rain
canopy as a tool, but it's nice to have a 10 x 10 place to hide from the sun and rain until a roof is on the building. Also a handy place to station/store tools, too.
And when working on a two-story wall you’ll need scaffolding, extension ladders, and step ladders of several heights (4’, 6’, 8’, 10’ are handy). I have watched builders try to work on a tall wall using ladders, planks, and ladder jacks alone, and it’s a safety nightmare! It’s not inexpensive to rent scaffolding, but neither are the medical expenses of falling from 10' or 12’. Purchase scaffolding and plan to resell it, or save money (but not time) and build your own scaffolding. Just be sure to make it stable and sturdy because you could have several people up there during different construction task, all with tools and materials. Plastering tall walls takes even more people. Repurpose the lumber and plywood when you take the scaffolding down.
Bale Stacking. You don’t say if you’re doing the plumbing and electrical (that’s another set of tools!) but both should be roughed-in before you stack bales. I like to get the framing inspection completed along with electrical and plumbing rough-in inspections so there are no mid-bale stack inspections and the inspectors can see everything before we cover with bales. Talk with your building department—ask what they prefer.
Tools for a bale stack depend somewhat on the way you’re stacking the bales. If the bales are laid-flat and you’re notching them for posts, a 14 amp electric chain saw with a 16” bar is mighty useful—light weight, quiet, doesn’t heat up. A less powerful electric saw can work but it’ll choke more often, and may not cut completely through a bale, requiring several passes. Gas chain saws work too, but they are loud, the exhaust smells, and they pose a fire risk if you set a hot saw down in a pile of loose straw. You could also cut notches with a sharp hay knife—it just takes a lot longer. If you stack the bales on-edge or on-end your framing will have been designed so notching isn’t necessary, though you might find a chainsaw or hay knife really useful for slicing a bale lengthwise. No matter which way you orient the bales you’ll need a bale needle for resizing bales, and you may need it if you’re sewing through the wall to attach mesh on one or both sides. A utility knife comes in handy for cutting strings, as do tools to help with a variety of methods to keep the walls plumb as the wall goes up—drill/driver, framing hammer, bale hammer (which you can fabricate from job site wood scraps). To make moving bales from the stack to the wall we use hand trucks, garden carts, and hay hooks.
Plaster Preparation. Many (not all) straw bale walls have to be prepped prior to plastering. If the walls aren’t prepped plastering will take longer, and the plaster won’t last as long. By prepped I mean made ready to receive coats of plaster. If the straw bale walls perform a structural role this preparation is even more important. A short list of tools we use to prep walls include scissors or utility knife to cut strips of building paper that should cover framing (unless you’re OK with telegraphing cracks), T-50 stapler to attach the paper, metal snips for cutting casing bead, weep screed, and metal flashing, an angle grinder to cut strips of metal lath and lengths of metal mesh (though a metal snips works too—just takes longer and makes for really, really sore hands!), hammer (for pounding in landscape stakes to keep mesh flat to the bale wall)...
Plastering. Something to mix the plaster. For a house-sized
project you could rent a 6 cubic foot or larger mortar mixer--it's the best tool for this job if you have a large crew. Some people buy a used mixer and resell it when they are finished. Mixing can be done with a small concrete mixer, which has to run pretty much non-stop to keep up with more than two or three plasterers. We preferred to clean mixers with a pressure washer because it does a better job faster, but a bit more time spent with a garden hose and scrub brush will work. Lots of buckets to assist with measure your binder and aggregate so you mix consistent batches. All of this mixing could be done by hand of
course (with a wheelbarrow and hoe), and several generations ago it was—with a lot of human power! For small finish plaster jobs we'll often use a paddle drill and a 5-gallon
bucket. You'll need a wheelbarrow to move the plaster from the mixing area to the wall and a few more buckets to place plaster close to the plasterers (or they spend a lot of time going up and down ladders). Scoops to get plaster from the buckets to hawks that plasters hold in one hand while applying it to the wall with a trowel. We use different trowel sizes and styles for scratch, brown, and finish coats, but many straw bale homes have been plastered with not much more than a few 8”, 10”, and 12” trowels. We also use longer wood floats—18”, 24”, 36”, 48” to help flatten the wall—and these can be made from job site scraps.
Earth Floors. Tools for placing an earth floor are pretty much the same as for plastering. If you can borrow a laser level it'll help keep the floor flatter, but I know people who make do with a variety of levels.
I know this is approaching book length, so I’ll stop. It’s possible to build a house with a few simple tools. It was done that way several generations ago. But the more tools you have that are specifically designed for a given task, the faster the work, the less wear-and-tear on your body, and probably less frustration trying to make a tool do things it’s not particularly well designed for. As I mentioned earlier, you can always sell lightly used tools (and you might buy some lightly used tools, too!).
Lots of information like this in
Straw Bale Building Details: An Illustrated Guide for Design and Construction by the California Straw Building Association, a non-profit that promotes the use of straw as a building material. The chapters on installing plumbing and electrical, stacking bales, and plastering go into more detail. Proceeds from book sales support CASBA’s research, development, outreach, and education efforts. Check it out!
And good luck! Participating in the construction of one’s own home is among the most rewarding experiences a person can have. It's how I got started, and why the majority of the projects I worked on were alongside owner-builders.
Jim Reiland
Many Hands Builders.
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