[Cob] Mix

[Henry Raduazo]

	"three feet thick"!!!!? Wow that is very ambitious and a lot of  
mixing. With good cob, you could support a 5 story building with that  
wall. Even with fair quality cob that seems excessive.
	I have a picture of a slightly larger building that Ianto built. The  
walls are about 2 foot thick, but at least one foot of that thickness  
is a wall of straw bales. It has many times the insulating value of a  
3 foot thick wall of cob and plenty of strength to support the roof,  
and the 8-12 inches of cob has more than enough bio-mass to store a  
day's worth of solar heat. You have to buy a lot of straw, but I  
think you will get your money back in lowering the amount of wood you  
need to cut to heat your building.
	Also, consider a front tine tiller or cultivator if you are going to  
mix that much cob. I doubt that two people can foot mix that much cob  
in one season and still have time to do the roof and all the other  
stuff you need.
Ed
On Jul 18, 2010, at 2:32 PM, Janet Standeford wrote:

> Thanks, and I call them flakes as well. All the ranchers do that I  
> know of.
>
> Now my walls will be three feet thick at the base and taper on the  
> inside to 2 feet at the top. The interior measurements are 25 x 10  
> with an 8 x 10 bedroom off one back corner. The highest (south)  
> wall will be 14 feet high and the lowest (north) wall is about 8  
> feet high.
>
> The clay is sandy clay and is great. I made some awesome strong  
> cylinders though one came apart straight across at about the  
> middle. Guess there was too much straw in that? The 2 sections are  
> really strong.
>
> How thick are your walls?
>
>
> On 7/18/2010 11:08 AM, Dulane wrote:
>> Amazingly, I only used about 3 sixty pound bales in my whole  
>> (12x12) cob
>> house. I probably did it wrong, but after I mixed my clay and sand  
>> (which is
>> specific to the local materials) I added 1/10 the total mass of  
>> straw. Which
>> was like a 3" flake per 40-50 lb load.
>>
>>
> Janet Standeford OR
> www.buildingnaturally.info (Owned by you)
> A resource for healthy homes.
>
>
>
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