[Cob] Mosaics in the shower

[Jill Hogan]

  Hi Cary, this Jan our temperature went up to 55 degrees c, I must say 
only on one day the day we started Little Cottage. Most of summer here 
is between about 29 deg up to 46, 47, 48.I seems every summer is getting 
hotter are we surprized. What gets me through this kind of heat is my 
cob house. We are fortunate to have the highest varient of day and night 
temp in the western cape so I open all the windows at night and in fact 
if still hot inside I put a fan on my nice broad window sills and blow 
the cooler air inside and then first thing every morning I close 
everything capturing the cool air inside. My house is bliss I see people 
come in from outside and sort of collapse with relief in the coolness. I 
have also planned the house so in summer no sun shines in and in winter 
the sun streams in. My walls are 500mm thick so the heat never comes in 
through the walls.
Build it well and you will love your home like I do.

On 2010/08/17 10:52 PM, Cary Hocker wrote:
> Jill, what a beautiful home you have. I'm curious what are your daily 
> highs in the summer where you live? I've wanted to build a cob home 
> here in Texas but have held off in part due to the high summer temps 
> (avg. daily temp over 95 degrees F/35 degrees C right now) - which, 
> combined with high humidity in my part of the state, would make for an 
> unpleasantly hot home in the summertime. I'm concerned about the home 
> building up a huge reservoir of heat during the day and radiating it 
> back all night. So I'm very interested in other's experiences in hot 
> climates.
>
> Cary
>
> On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 7:00 AM, Jill Hogan <jill.hogan at mat.org.za 
> <mailto:jill.hogan at mat.org.za>> wrote:
>
>      Using gloves we pick the leaves and then cut them up into a
>     barrel. Wetop it up with water and leave the leaves brewing for
>     three weeks at least. We then sive the leaves out and slake our
>     lime int  the prickly pear water. We get a lovely creamy render
>     mix that very rarely cracks. I also use this mixture watered down
>     and with salt added for a paint over my buildings. As we live in
>     the semi desert with intense heat in summer we get massive
>     expansion and contraction so paint the buildings every year, just
>     before the rainy season in winter,  I am in South Africa in what
>     we call the Karoo.
>
>


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