[Cob] Washington, DC cobbers: New Project

[Raduazo at aol.com]

    We (DC Cobbers) have a new project scheduled for the Washington, DC area. 
It is a new children's playhouse to be constructed St. John's Episcopal 
Preschool on O- street in Georgetown. After talking with the school principal, I am 
personally very excited about this project. It is her goal to create a school 
that will compare favorably with the ten best schools of it's type in the 
world. I like the school, the environment and the people.
    Construction will be accomplished over a period of 5 or 6 days with the 
participation (and hopefully a little assistance) from parents, children and 
guests. We are planning to invite guests from the neighborhood and from adjacent 
schools to come and work on the house. Since each day may consist of a 
different group of people, then each day will include the same introduction to cob 
lecture. A little boring in that sense, but good in that we should be able to 
introduce a large number of people to cob.
    I hope some of you will be a thrilled as I am and willing to come in as 
my assistant in exchange for learning a little about cob construction. I will 
be building an urbanite foundation sometime in September. If you have never 
tried stone working this is a great chance. I will not be building a full fledged 
foundation for our little 4-6 foot walls, but the principles used to cut and 
fit pieces of urbanite apply to all stone construction. This should take about 
two days and those dates are not set. Since urbanite is an adult only 
endeavor the exact days are flexible and can be set to suit the convenience of myself 
and a volunteer assistant. The building days are October 4, 6, 8, 12, 18. I 
hope it will not take that many days, but I am putting them on the calendar 
just in case. You will notice that these are alternating days. That gives the cob 
one day to dry between building days, and if it rains, the 4th automatically 
gets bumped to the 5th and so on.
    I hope there are a few folks out there interested in learning cob. If 
someone from outside the Washington, DC area is interested in coming down (or up) 
they will be welcomed to camp out on one of my spare rooms.
    I will also be doing a rammed earth floor in August dates on that are 
also flexible. I have never done this so, I will be working from directions in 
The Sculpted House, and you will be learning along with me.
Ed