[Cob] those pics of the beautiful tree-sculpted wall...

[Shannon C. Dealy]

On Mon, 12 Jan 2004, CM Hellwinckel wrote:

> There's a great description in Ianto's Cob book of a guy that mixed cob
> in the street with a bobcat and made 20 tons in about 10 hours and kept
> it wet and useable until all the cob was in place.  Maybe you can follow
> up by getting his name and seeing how well the house is standing the
> test of time??  He did have to rent a power sprayer afterwards to clean
> the street.  But this is a good example of using already asphalted land
> to mix cob with heavy machinery (without compacting your land).

The guy is Rob Bolman, and while I haven't seen the place lately, I'm sure
it's doing fine.  I did not mean to imply that a tractor / skidloader
cob mix would not hold up, only that it is inferior to the foot mixed
stuff.  Basically what this means is when you are applying the mix, you
will likely find clumps of straw, bits of earth without straw, and alot
more inconsistency in the mix basically.  Since you are still going to
hand apply the cob, you can discard the really bad bits of the mix, and
just use the better quality stuff (which should still be most of it).
The problem of getting the ratios right when mixing on bare earth can be
significant and result in the entire batch being significantly inferior
(because of the ratios in the mix getting skewed) to the foot mixed
variety (where the problem is both easier to detect and rectify).
Unfortunately, the nearest pavement or concrete pad is almost 1/2 mile
from here (and it is a 2 lane road with no shoulder), so bare earth is my
only option for mixing this way.

Shannon C. Dealy      |               DeaTech Research Inc.
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