[Cob] corvallis cob cottage update

[Ocean Liff-Anderson]

Sad story, Sarah!  Crazy how much it would "cost" to make the cob  
habitable by code standards.

My suggestion for the structure would be to designate it a "studio",  
not to be habited and thus not needing insulation, wiring, plumbing,  
etc.  But then it could be finished and remain a beautiful structure  
and an example of cob building...

Ocean

On Dec 29, 2007, at 5:53 PM, Sarah Booth wrote:

>
> It's been a long time since I've updated this group on my husband  
> and my cob cottage building project in Corvallis Oregon.  The re- 
> cap; fall 2005-fall 2006 we spent building the walls of a sweet 200  
> (interior) square foot cob cottage which we intended to live in  
> discreetly not wanting to deal with trying to educate the city and  
> push through a permit.  October 2006, someone turned us in and we  
> started dealing with the city.  After a year of researching the  
> issues and talking to a friendly local engineer, we made pretty  
> good head way.  One of the seemingly most daunting issues between  
> us and the city was insulation value, as the codes state that the  
> walls have to have a minimum value which typical cob walls do not  
> have.  Just a couple of weeks ago, our engineer was talking to the  
> city and together they determined that we could make up for the  
> lack of insulation in the walls by adding enough to the floor and  
> ceiling!  This was BIG news, one of our main issues solved!  Well,  
> as !
>  things are now, we can only hope that this head way we made will  
> be taken advantage of by someone else wanting to build with cob in  
> Corvallis, Oregon.  The owners of the property we have been  
> building on have determined, after researching the cost of bringing  
> all utilities to the structure and paying for all applicable fees  
> and permits, the structure will cost about $35,000 which is about  
> $20,000 more than they expected and out of their price range.  So,  
> after all this, we won't be persuing a permit for a habitable cob  
> cottage.  We will hopefully be finishing the structure as a shed or  
> out building (or possibly uncovering it and letting the Oregon  
> rains take their coarse), we just need to convince the property  
> owners that they want to keep this lovely little cob cottage on  
> their property even if they can't use it to share their land with  
> another home and family as they had desired.  So, from you I am  
> asking for ideas, brain storms (and no ideas are bad in a brain  
> storm).  W!
>  hat would you do if you had the walls of a cob structure in your back
> yard (on 1/2 acre, in the city).  How would you use this, what  
> opportunities are we not seeing?  Thanks for the input!  Sarah Booth
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