Cob: sacrilege

[Shannon C. Dealy]

On Wed, 14 Aug 2002, David Kammer wrote:

[snip]
> structures over the benches.  Is there any ways of
> finishing off a bench so that it doesn't require a
> roof? The group has said that they are willing to look
[snip]

I'm not sure where you are located/what your climate is, or what the long
term prospects for maintenance of any protective coating are, but both of
these could have significant bearing on how effective a given protective
coating might be.

I have no idea how effective this would be never having tried it, but you
might try doing a few things:

  1 - Design the bench seat so that it will naturally shed the water,
      leaving no place for it to puddle.  This would probably involve
      putting some large holes at the base of the back to provide a
      channel for the water to run out.  You will probably want this
      design to be corbelled out slightly with some kind of a drip edge
      placed on it so the water doesn't run down the sides of the bench.

  2 - Make sure its on a good base up off the ground.

  3 - Try sealing the surfaces which would get direct rain fall or water
      flow on them (seat, seat back, drain holes, drip edge, etc.) using
      an approach similar to what is used for sealing cob floors, repeated
      coats of linseed oil mixed with thinner, followed by a final coat of
      bees wax (check the coblist archives: www.deatech.com/natural/coblist/
      for more details).  Using this approach, you could leave a
      significant area of the cob untreated (the sides) which would allow
      it to breathe, while providing a smooth sealed surface for people to
      sit on and rain to run off of.

As I said, I have no idea how well this will work, I think if it's done
right, it could work reasonably well, providing someone is willing to give
it a fresh top coat of bees wax/linseed oil on a periodic basis (how
periodic I don't know, though if I were to guess I'd say once every year
or two).

Shannon C. Dealy      |               DeaTech Research Inc.
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