[Cob] over oiled floor

[Henry Raduazo]

I found the answers to questions asked last year and thought some people might be interested. 
	First: you may remember I built a wood shed using rototiller cob and shredded wood instead of straw. I wondered why Robert's disc style chipper turned willow oak into long straw-like fibers. This year Robert replaced the blades on his chipper and now his 6 inch Vermeer is putting out fine 1/4 to 1/2 inch chips instead of 4 inch straw fibers. Apparently, if you want wood fibers suitable for cob you must use a chipper with a very dull blade.

	Second: I and many other people have been having trouble with mason bees. Mason bees are beneficial pollinators and non-aggressive, so it was neat when I only had a few of them, but after ten years I was getting hundreds of bees and the population was still growing. I felt this would start threatening the integrity of the wall. 
	Lime plaster and lime paint seem to prevent the mason bees from attacking new sections of wall, but in places where they are well established, they can and will tunnel through even 1/4 inch layers of lime. 
	The solution is to hang up a very thin layer of plastic. I used painters tarp so thin a 12 foot by16 foot sheet comes in a plastic envelope and weighs less than 1/2 pound. This blocked the bees access to the wall and they moved to other less critical cob walls on my property or to river banks along the Potomac. 

Ed
 http://www.habitat.org/cd/cwp/participant/participant.aspx?pid=93541387