[Cob] insulated north wall - cob +straw bales or what?

[Robert Alcock]

Our cob cabin in northern Spain is pretty much complete and we're making 
plans for the main house, which is also going to be essentially a 
cob-walled structure. But we've been debating back-and-forth the options 
for the north wall of the building. One option is load-bearing straw 
bale with cob plaster, but we are a bit wary of using straw bales as a 
load-bearing structure in our wet climate. Another option we considered 
was a fully load-bearing cob wall (maybe a foot - 35cm thick) with straw 
bale insulation outside - but this ends up with a very thick wall. Then 
there's the option of using flakes of straw or straw-clay outside the 
wall as insulation - but how to implement this?

I'm sure plenty of people must have faced this situation before, so I 
thought I'd ask the group for advice.

By the way, there is a 20-page booklet about our cabin and the process 
of building it that people might find useful as an introduction to cob 
self-build. It's available on our website at

http://www.lesspress.com/twiki/bin/view/English/SnailCabin

Thanks,

Robert