Rethink Your Life!
Finance, health, lifestyle, environment, philosophy
The Work of Art and The Art of Work
Kiko Denzer on Art



[Cob] soil cement foundation

francine fran2000a1 at yahoo.com
Fri Jun 3 10:28:02 CDT 2005


I finally understand what you said in another post about
working slowly and by yourself.  My brother in law showed
up the other day while I was digging.  After watching for a
minute I guess he felt sorry for me and grabbed a pick and
dug in the trench for quite some distance.  I do appreciate
his help he is very strong and can swing the pick much
deeper than me (I am really slow).  When he finished he was
tired and left me with the digging lots of loosened soil. 
I could not remove all the dirt that he dug up.  Usually I
work at digging and then remove that portion and go back to
digging.  That was keeping the trench clean, and I had dug
it so that it would drain some in case of rain.  I went to
bed exhausted and worried about rain. 

The rain came in torrents, and now I am the proud owner of
a  moat full of mud and water that will take days to dry
out.  I tried to clean the trench out yesterday, but just
made a bigger mess.  The sides are too soft and trying to
cave in when I walk uphill.  It was looking so neat before
and I was proud of the trench I had dug.  So in the end I
am further behind than I would have been just digging by
myself slowly and paying attention to the drainage of the
trench.  Hopefully, someone will learn from my mistake. 
Remove what you dig and make sure if rain is predicted the
trench has enough fall.  Work slowly and pay attention to
every detail.  I had already created a runoff trench
running completely downhill at the bottom of the slope so
help with drainage.  So I should not have let that happen.


Also I considered the bags, but don't want to worry with
plastering them at this stage of building.  Working alone
with a fairly good size cottage I did not think I could
accomplish all that plastering in time to stop the
degradation of the bags from exposure to sunlight.  I have
lots of sand nearby and making soil cement in a wheel
barrow  won't be much more labor intensive I hope.  I can
get the brother in law back to construct the forms. I do
appreciate him a lot.  Also my mother (77 yrs old) helps me
too, she has done concrete work in the past.  She's much
tougher than  I am!

<snipped>
--- JUDITH WILLIAMS <williams_judith at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Sounds like we are at about the same stage of
> construction. Ordinarily I 
> would be frustrated at the slow progress (of digging) but
> in this case I 
> really appreciate the time to consider all the options as
> I work. Here is 
> what I have almost certainly settled on for the stem wall
> over the rubble 
> trench foundation. I will go with earthbags filled with a
> mixture of soil, 
> large  pumice, and lime. This eliminates the need for any
> forms and is 
> something I can do without assistance. The only concern
> is that the filled 
> bags will be too heavy to handle but I'm sure I could get
> innovative about 
> that. 

God Bless America
 
Francine


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