Cob: Origins of Cement vs Cob

[SANCO Enterprises <Paul & Mary Salas>]

"H. Wayne" wrote:

Heavily SNIPPED

>Wow, I knew a lot of folks were talking out of their hat, but I was
hoping some actually read a few books, or had some actual experiences to
share.

>Really folks, all the opinions in the world do not help thoses of us
looking for answers.  If you are going to offer advise, please have some
REAL knowledge on the >subject, or experience we all can profit from.

If we are going to be critical of fellow cobbers (errors, omissions and
fibs), then we should heed our own advice and read a book (ASTM Test
Procedures) on how to properly conduct a test on cob, adobe and earthen
blocks. What you described in your test example does not correlate to
any ASTM test method for the material. Compression, modulus of rupture
and absorption are accepted test standards and should be utilized if one
is going to compare similarities or differences between materials.

I understand your concern about opinions being repeated so often that
they take on the appearance of fact as well as mis-stating or stretching
what is fact in such a manner as to make the fact questionable.

In the Materials Lab at UNM we are conducting a multitude of tests on
various earthen material mix designs and most recently, Eric Rhoades has
volunteered to do his Master's Thesis on building codes relating to cob,
monolithic adobe and pneumatically applied earthen materials. The
selfish choice would have been to find a niche for Eric in our lab work,
however I felt that the cob community could benefit more from combining
our lab results into a body of work involving code acceptance of the
medium. I've spoken to John Fordice about working with Eric since he has
worked so hard on getting a universal cob code and he has agreed work
with Eric. This is only another small step in the data acquisition
process that must be properly presented if we are to make an impact on
recognizing cob as a viable construction medium.

Paul Salas
SANCO Enterprises, LLC
Albuq., NM