Cob: Real information

[Shannon C. Dealy]

On Mon, 19 Jul 1999 HandyM2 at aol.com wrote:

> 
> I am curious just how many of the Cobbers giving opinions have actually BUILT 
> anything with cob?  Seems a lot of "Mee Too" type quotations and opinion here.
> 
> The little I have played with Cob was interesting but not exactly a world 
> saving material.  I am personally more fond of Lime Stabilized Soil mixtures, 
> I've helped with in South America.
> 
> Anybody want to say they LIVE in a Cob House today?  Can we visit it? 

A number of people on this list have a great deal of real experience with
cob, though most of the experienced cobbers that I know personally are
either not members of this list (for various reasons) or are very quiet
(you know who you are :-)  I have worked on a number of different cob
buildings with some of the most experienced cobbers in this part of the
world (you were probably hoping that the person who runs this list at
least knew that it wasn't about corn cobs :-)  As far as living in cob
houses, I don't but several of my friends either live in them, or have cob
studios or accessory buildings that they use on a daily basis.  I do have
a small experimental structure underway which you can visit if you are in
Oregon, but I am not sure how interesting you will find a building with an
80 square foot interior and walls that are currently three to four feet
high (though at least they have started getting taller again :-)

The reason I personally prefer cob over other materials is that it can
often or generally be made with just the materials on hand.  This may be
far from an ideal mix, but if it works and it's right there, there is a
much greater chance of it being used.  All other wall systems that I have
encountered (that I can think of at the moment anyway) except for wattle &
daub, generally require lots of energy/processing/technology and therefore
cannot usually be done with just the materials at hand by a person with
little or no money.  Lime while it is fairly common, is generally not
going to be just lying around on your land, and as I recall it takes a
fair amount of heat to process it for use as a building material, which
generally means pollution, and increased price.


Shannon C. Dealy      |                    DeaTech Research Inc.
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