Cob: Cob In Canada

[Don Stephens]

On Fri, 12 Nov 1999, 2beers wrote:

> I live near (3miles) (and no obstructionsfrom)Lake Huron and the Winters
> can be quite severe with Wind chills to -40 and beyond.........  Any one
> with usful information Please contact John 2beers at
> "2beers at primeline.net". 

John, with your kind of site, I'd be thinking bermed, facing away from the
wind (which way does it tend to blow).  To use cob, I'd build with about
12" - 18" of it as the inner surface of perimeter walls, then strawbale it
on the outside (bales on edge (about 14" thick), bamboo-pinned vertically
through the ties and horizontally back to anchors in the cob, then finish
the outside with a thick adobe/lime stucco, for a total wall thickness of
about 3'.  For the roof, maybe strawbales flat, sandwiched between 18" 
composite wood "I"  beams (TJIs, a very resource-efficient system based on
quickly renewable raw material), salvaged plywood deck, waterproofing and
then about 8" of humus and perlite-rich sod.... 

For heating, I'd latch onto summer sun with a greenhouse, sunporch or
thermosyphon feeding warm air into the ground through air tubes of
salvaged materials running about 4' - 6' under the floor, so the May heat
would start radiating from the floor around October and "August" would
arrive in January.  Back that up with a high-mass, outside-air-fed wood
burner for occasional suppliment on the frostiest nights and you shouldn't
need any other heat, if you do it well.

To make this "loving warmth from Mother's earth" system perform properly,
the other thing you need to do is insulate/rain-divert out at least 10'
all around your house underground (20's better) - many ways to do this
with cheap/free materials like strawbales, corregated cardboard, salvaged
carpeting, etc., lying on polysheet, capped by same protected with more
salvaged carpeting, then earthed and planted.  This insulating "cape"
should slope positively down away from the house all around.  If you elect
to berm, you could put the cape in those areas in the berm (or make the
berms out of bales capped with polysheet, carpet and earth.) 

If you're on flattish ground and the water table is high, lay your "cape" 
insulation on the existing surface, then dig a "moat" around the "caped" 
area, using the earth to cover the cape, build up the house site, and make
your cob and stucco.  Just be sure to do a super job of compacting the
under-house soil, so it won't settle later, damaging your cob, etc. (put
the underslab air tubes in before hand, or trench them in later.)

how does all this madness strike you?  You may need to cogitate on it with
more than two beers, but it sure would be a house that could buck the wind
and its chill. <G> Should be inexpensive, too - around $40/ft. Canadian or
less, with you doing the work and a bit of black-belt binning...<G>....Don