Cob: East Timor Project

[Shannon C. Dealy]

On Wed, 27 Oct 1999, Rosemary Lyndall Wemm wrote:

> Another limitation is that the major crops are rice and corn; there is
> no wheat to make hay straw. What kind of substitutes could be used?
> 
> - Rosemary

The name of the game is fiber, grass can be used (it's what I'm using in
the building mentioned in my previous response), as can rice straw
(though I hear it is rather hard on the hands and feet), and undoubtedly a
variety of other locally available materials will work as well.  Some
fibers will work better than others, what you are looking for is strength,
length (6 to 12 inches is probably best, though you can always cut longer
fibers) and how well the sand-clay mix will grip the surface of the fiber
once the cob has dried.  Ultimately, the best thing to do is to is to take
the local materials and try making test bricks using different materials
and different proportions.  Once they have dried, test them to see how
strong they are, how easily they break into two pieces, and if they come
apart easily once they have been broken, or if the two pieces remain
intact and strongly attached to each other by the fibers between them.


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