Stucco on Outside Walls - Preparation & Application
I was gone for a few days after the wall raising and when I returned I discovered this gouge. I had heard of birds removing strands of straw from unplastered walls for their nests. But that's a gradual thing. Two of the outside walls of my practice hut had remained uplastered for years and they were still in good shape. I couldn't be there all the time, so it happened again, and again, and again. In two different places a full half-bale was picked away straw by straw. Then I realized they were removing straw to get at wheat seeds, left behind by an inefficient harvester. I had never heard of that happening before, and I'd known lots of people who built with straw. It was just my bad luck to get such a seed-packed batch of bales. Essentially I had I erected a giant bird-feeder at the edge of the wilderness
If I had been more experienced, organized, and prepared I would have plastered soon after the wall raising. But I hadn't completed my final design for the plumbing and electric, and that had to come first, along with the adobe block partition wall, windows, doors, ceiling insulation, and drywall. So to reduce the bird damage I covered the walls with tarps. But some hungry birds got under the tarps. And rodents found there way to the seeds in the bottom strawbales.
To repair the critter damage I spent most of a winter patching the walls with either mud or loose straw stuffed tight behind expanded metal lath held in place with 6 inch nails and heavy-gauge steel wire bent into the shape of giant bobby pins, aka: Roberta Pins.
