Monthly Archives

June 2008

Jun 28
Love0

A bit more rain…

By Moisture

I didn’t get a heck of a lot of time to work on the cob house since it was very wet and gray and rainy throughout much of the past six days. I must say that it’s a real drag constantly worrying about the weather and covering up the walls every night with tarps, and hoping that gusts of wind don’t come in and mess things up. (Usually, if it’s raining and not very windy, the building gets less wet than when it is both rainy/windy.) I frequently have a hard time sleeping when it’s thundering and storming at night because I worry about the condition of the building.

Of course, it’s my luck that I just so happen to be building a cob house during one of the wettest years on record. But I must say, the house is faring quite well despite the numerous flash floods and constant storming. The walls have gotten significantly wet in some spots a few times thus far, but the damage has been minimal. There has been nothing more than some minor runoff of material and the integrity of the walls has not been threatened in any way. Cob astounds me in that way — it’s simply strong and can take a beating.

I imagine once the walls are complete and the roof is up, this building is going to be standing for a long, long time…

Jun 24
Love0

Building a lean-to trestle

By Hand Tools

trestle00

Over the weekend, I built a lean-to trestle. The cob walls are getting too tall in some spots to work from the ground. I’ve been using a long bench that Thomas kindly lent to me, but I needed at least one other (and taller) option to reach high up.

I based this trestle off of a design in The Hand-Sculpted House, but I made it a bit more simplistic, since I didn’t need this trestle to be super-tall (and because my carpentry skills are pretty marginal). I used some old 2x4s and some 1x lumber. The trestle is about five feet wide and leans against the cob wall for support, and gives me an extra three feet to my standing height. It works just lovely.

Jun 23
Love0

Another cob house picture update

By Cob Building

int-se00

angle-se01

The house is starting to feel much more like an actual house now that some of the walls are 6+ feet tall. Standing inside, it’s also easier to imagine what the final house will look like, where things will go, and how big the space feels.

Jun 22
Love0

Sculpting with cob

By Cob Building, Cob Shelves

entry-shelf00

If there’s one thing you’ve probably heard/read about cob many times before, it’s probably the fact that cob is immensely sculptural.

Lately, I have been working at a much slower pace since I have been working on sculpting various cob book shelves and other little storage nooks into the walls of my house. The photo above is a small shelf immediately next to the entrance. When I look at it now, I think of the mouth of a snake or the jaw of some other creature.

bookshelf00

This wide bookshelf extends almost a foot from the wall, and is nearly 18″ at its peak height in the center. The shape is pretty strange and not exactly what I intended to sculpt, but I kinda like it now that it is done. (I can always do a little bit of carving with a machete if I decide to alter the appearance.) I will build a similarly-sized shelf right above this one.

mushroom-window-ext01 mushroom-window-int00

This mushroom-shaped window came to me in a something like a vision the morning before I started to work. I acted upon the impulse and stuck a piece of sheet glass in the wall and began to sculpt around the glass to make something roughly mushroom-like. I’m pretty satisfied with the end result. It will look much cleaner once the walls are plastered, I think.

coathooks00

I carved these coat hooks from some mulberry wood and planted them in some fresh cob this afternoon. I mostly just cut the wood to size, whittled it down a bit, and smoothed it out. These are located right near the entrance for jackets and other things for hanging. I hope these hooks give the effect that they growing out of the wall once it’s all said and done.

Jun 15
Love0

Meka’s cob cottage video

By Video

Here’s a little video showing off a gorgeously designed cob cottage interior by Meka in southern Oregon. Beautiful curves, built-in shelves and furniture, and a wild staircase design are the highlights.

Jun 14
Love0

Three feet and rising

By Cob Building

cobhouse01

Ok, so my original estimate of 100 total batches of cob to complete the walls may have been off.

Eighty plus batches later, the walls stand at an average height of 3.5′ (not including the foundation), which is probably half the total amount of cob necessary. Some taller spots are now no longer workable without standing on a bench (as seen in the areas next to the south window in the photo above.)

Now begins the time when the actual cob application slows down, due to the extra step of having to stand on and move a bench or scaffolding (which I might just need to make soon…) to work the walls.

We didn’t get nearly the same amount of work done this week thanks the absurd amount of rain, but I guess a little break is an okay thing, too…

Jun 10
Love0

The cobbing workflow

By Cob Building

I thought I might touch upon the actual cobbing process, since I haven’t really talked about that specific element of building very much. Over the past few weeks, we have developed a very efficient working system, allowing us to quickly stomp, loaf, and apply the cob to the walls.

burrito

It begins with a “burrito”, the final cob mix of sand, clay, and straw. (Once cob has reached its ideal mixed state, you can roll it and it keeps its shape, which is something like the shape of a burrito).

loafing

Once we are satisfied with the mix, we begin to make “cobs”, or little loafs of the material. It’s almost like kneading dough: grab a bunch of cob, and make a loaf that can easily be picked up without breaking. (Making each loaf should take no more than a few seconds.) We call the really big ones “wonderbreads”.

loaf-wall

We then carry these loaves to the wall (which is typically no more than a few feet from where we are mixing), and line them all up. (First we soak down the walls with some water so this newest layer gets worked in to the existing cob more easily.)

cobbing-thumb

Next we take cobbers thumbs and “stitch” the cobs together, making sure the straw gets worked well, and the individual cobs can no longer be distinguished. This newest layer should also get worked into the layer underneath. This is a quick and rough job that goes quickly. The main key is create a cohesive, monolithic wall.

cobbing-edge

Next, we work the wall with our hands, creating a clean, plumb edge. Viola!

Here are some different angles of the cob house in progress:

angle-se angle-ne

angle-n angle-sw

Jun 09
Love0

Rain, rain, rain

By Cob Building, Moisture

This is an extraordinarily rainy spring. We’ve had so much rainfall so frequently, with so many warnings of flash floods and tornadoes the past number of weeks that it’s been hindering not just our gardens, but local farmers from getting their crops in the ground, too. And of course it’s been washing away all the mulch on our roads here, and slowing down building. At least the cisterns are full.

Every day the past few weeks, it seems that there’s been a warning of severe thunderstorms — never just thunderstorms, always severe thunderstorms. Thankfully they don’t always occur as predicted, or I’m sure my cob walls would have washed away by now.

I write this after another night of rain. The cob walls are very wet and soft to the touch in some spots, and the sun is nowhere to be had, but very thankfully (and surprisingly), there is no rain in the forecast the next two days. I am quite tired of worrying about the weather by now, and I really hope this rain dies down sooner rather than later. There is certainly benefit to having a roof up before your cob walls are built (as this very rainy season shows us), but unfortunately, that wasn’t really an option for me. I’m beginning to wish it was, though!

Jun 05
Love0

The cob wall is growing

By Cob Building, Cob Shelves, Moisture

cobwall01

The cob wall is growing day by day, despite tremendous recent rainstorms.

On Monday night, we suffered a huge storm, with 3.5″ of rain pouring down overnight, complete with blazing lightning and ground-shaking thunder. The following morning, a little flash flood passed through, dropping a whole additional inch of rain within a mere 20 minutes. The whole night and throughout the flood, I feared for the well-being of my house in progress, but the cob walls survived. The walls were covered in tarps (and not fantastically, might I add — there were many gaps/tears for water to enter), and the walls did get soaked, although there was nothing more than surface damage when all was said and done. The walls dried the next day, when the sun decided to come out.

Since that storm, I’ve been on an obsessive lookout for rain and trying to do a better job of tarping up the walls.

But anyway, progress has been brisk. Tom (a.k.a., Treetop), a friend from St. Louis came up on Tuesday night, and it’s been nice to have his extra help. Currently, the walls are sitting at a comfortable three feet in height most of the way around, perhaps even higher in some spots. We banged together and installed a window buck for a southeast-facing window at the beginning of the week, and yesterday, I starting cobbing the first shelf.

windowbuck

The make the shelf, I have been using “corbel cobs”, long, narrow, thin cobs packed with extra straw for tensile strength. These are laid on a level wall and then stitched together at the back, and pinched in the front. The first course hangs off the wall by about an inch, and the next corbel cob courses follow suit. A few more courses and the shelf will extend a good 6-7″ off the wall. This I intend to be a book shelf.

cobshelf00

I estimate that the walls are about 1/3 of the way complete. The sand reserves are getting low, too — looks like I’ll need another nine ton delivery within a week or two!

cobhouse01