Cob: Size of buildings

[Shannon C. Dealy]

On Tue, 29 Jan 2002, planetcow wrote:

[snip]
> own in West Virginia. I've read and heard many times that cob construction
> favors small buildings. When does a "small" building stop being "small" and
> start becoming "medium" or "large"? Numbers would be helpful; I'm thinking
> 900-1000 square feet for a single story house, or split between two stories
> of 400-500 sf each, is a good size. Is this too big?
[snip]

It is not so much that cob "favors" small buildings, but it is alot of
work, so it is better to start small and add on as needed, this way at
least something gets completed in a reasonable amount of time.  Aside from
the reasons for starting small with cob, there are good reasons to build
smaller just basically:

    1 - less energy for heating/cooling
    2 - lower property taxes
    3 - less maintenance
    4 - cheaper
    5 - discourages excessive consumerism by eliminating excess
        storage for all the junk

I can't speak for everyone else, but I tend to think of small as
anything under 500 square feet, medium as 500-1200 square feet,
and large as anything larger than 1200.  Don't know where these numbers
come from, but they just seem right to me.  Of course with cob, even a 500
square foot house can be a substantial project if you don't have a fair
bit of help.

Shannon C. Dealy      |               DeaTech Research Inc.
dealy at deatech.com     |          - Custom Software Development -
                      |    Embedded Systems, Real-time, Device Drivers
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