Rethink Your Life!
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The Work of Art and The Art of Work
Kiko Denzer on Art



Cob: responsibilities and the machine

Mike Carter and Carol Cannon cobcrew at sprynet.com
Sun Aug 29 22:09:00 CDT 1999


From: SANCO Enterprises <Paul & Mary Salas> <chansey at earthlink.net>
>
>Anything can be taken to extremes and if we want to be totally purists when
it
>comes to building with cob/earthen materials, let's throw away all the
machines
>and tools such as the car that got you to the job site, shovels, hoes,
>wheelbarrows and the like. We take a lot for granted and try to exclude
machines
>and tools from our modern lives.  The use of the machine takes away the
>non-creative and non-productive aspect of building with earth-mixing and
getting
>the material to the wall.  You still have to create your own free form wall
>system and an shape the material as you build.  I personally don't see
anything
>creative in mixing nearly 50 yds of soil by hand over a period os several
years
>to construct a 1000 sq ft home.

Paul, it takes us less than 25 days to mix, move, and place that much cob
with 3 people.  Where are you getting your "straw man" numbers (period of
several years) from?  The cob is only 20-30% of the effort (cost if you are
paying for help) in the building, anyway.  I agree about mixing and moving
large amounts of the stuff being dulling, but in our experience it is only a
few hours work out of the day.  I have been in several situations where
experienced cobbers see making the cob as beneath them; some even vocalize
that they will help out as long as they don't have to make the material.
Here, I have heard that rammed earth suffers from the same problem, leading
to high employee turnover.

We are always interested in more efficient ways to make, move, and place
cob.  There is another aspect to machinery which must be considered -
safety.  This includes exposure to noise and fumes as well as the
possibility of accident.

Have any experienced cobbers tried your machine and pronounced it's output
as being actual "cob" as we know it?  I was ready to drive over to NM to
test it when we last spoke; it was unavailable at the time.  Contractors
here in Austin have speculated about using carousel-type stucco pumps for
cob;  there were problems of aggregate size (requiring expensive pre-sifting
of the ingredients) and inability to handle straw that needed to be
overcome.  I know your design is different.

$25,000 doesn't seem totally unreasonable to me;  we were approached a few
years back by someone selling a stabilized soil block machine for $400,000
which could make 20,000 bricks a day.  Problem was, what did you do with all
that output?  I think one machine could supply most of the region.

Mike