[Cob] RE: Coblistqueries

[Bob & Lorraine]

Good morning all,

Well our walls of our storeroom and working shelter are over head height
and still standing strong.

We finished up making our cobs fairly wet and patting them onto the
wall.  I hope they don't shrink too much and cause cracking, but it's
all part of the experiment.  Has anyone any idea how long a cob wall
normally has to stand in reasonable weather to show up any imperfections
in construction?

I have a number of queries I'm hoping you can help with:

1:  If cobs are made the consistency of bread dough (I make my own
bread, and bread dough is workable but much, much drier than the cobs we
made), do you have to wet the outsides of each to make it adhere to the
wall and its neighbors?  If not, how do you go about it?

2:  Cob floors - how many of you have made them, how successful were
they and what did you put under them?  Where we have been walking
backwards and forwards over cob mix that didn't get used and dried up,
it is as solid as can be, without any cracks. 

3:  Finishing off any kind of earth floor:  why boiled linseed oil?  Why
not vegetable oils that are used for cooking, especially re-cycled
cooking oil that has been used for hotel chip cooking? Has anyone tried
it?  I'm wondering if there is some special reason why linseed oil is
always mentioned (plus an addition sometimes of tung oil - whatever that
is) and not other plant-based oils.  Or is a tradition that everyone has
followed without experimenting with other oils?

4:  Has anyone suggestions for inexpensive alternative roofing they have
found successful and not TOO time consuming?

5:  Has anyone tried laying a framework onto a level, plastic-sheet
covered area and tried making a wall on the ground, drying it then
standing it up and incorporating it into the building?  I'm thinking of
doing an experiment of making cob panels (or perhaps it should be called
rammed earth, using a cob mix) to make a bench or shelves to see how
successful this method would be. I love cobbing, but in our situation of
having to travel miles to do a layer of cob, repeated each day, it's
proving to be not a very viable method of building.

4:  Are any of you cobbers out there in Australia? 

I've gained a lot of encouragement by being a part of this co list, and
thank you all for you helpfulness and willingness to share your
knowledge with others.  It's great.

God bless,
Lorraine Zinnack, 
Kangaroo Island, 
South Australia.