Sheep farmers in Ireland have massive bags of raw sheep’s wool sitting idle in their sheds which hold little monetary value while the cost of construction materials skyrocket.
Harrison Gardner is a builder who doesn’t follow the status quo. His approach to ‘building everything out of anything’ helps us see how much rich earth material surrounds us that we don’t make use of, in a day and age where conventional building materials are too expensive (and in the case of insulation, often toxic).
During the summer of 2021 I carted myself off down to Clare to a building residency with him. He had already begun to explore the untapped potential of raw sheep’s wood in Ireland. We continued these explorations.
A massive bag of raw sheep's wool, delivered directly from a local sheep farmer, totally free of charge to Harrison's workshop, ready for scouring
Dirty matted pieces of wool to be cut out
An entire coat of sheep's wool laid out flat
Filling the large buckets with hot water from the shower
Non toxic scouring plant is toddler friendly
mixing the wool around with a stick to help the process
While the wool is soaking in the water we put together a simple rack for drying the wool using old pallets and chicken wire.
Wool gets a second wash with gentle detergent, which is then rinsed out
The noticeably cleaner, scoured sheep's wool is laid out to dry in the sun
Draining the wool from its murky residue which contains lanolin
Drying rack moved beneath a covering to protect from rain
The liquid residue is collected in a large blue cylindrical tub, after further draining through this simple mesh
We explored methods of processing raw sheep's wool into usable materials, such as building insulation, rough wool & lanolin oil.
We hope these experiments will enable us to explore options and research how to best setup a working, small scale 'micro-scouring plant' for the distributive economy in Ireland.
What is scouring?
All fleece needs scouring, unless it is going to be hand-spun in the grease and washed later. Scouring removes dirt, impurities, extraneous matter (such as barbed wire!), and of course lanolin. White lanolin goes into cosmetics, brown lanolin from the coarser fleeces into prawn food in the Far East. There are two major scouring plants in the UK, both in Bradford, with a handful of much smaller plants elsewhere in the UK and Europe. Environmental pollution controls are very strict. Australia and New Zealand no longer have major scouring plants as all the processing is done in China.