[Cob] rebar

[dhowell at pickensprogressonline.com]

I agree. It's wrong of me to assume that everyone who wants to build  
their own home puts in the time to study what makes a home stand up.  
Although I believe we should be able to build our homes out of  
materials that may not be common, I also believe they should be  
"inspected" and checked by others. Janet and others are doing a fine  
job at getting approval of cob, but at a tremendous expense to them  
individually. What's odd is the way the so called "experts" in the  
cobbing community build in much the same manner as it always has been  
done. These are the people we would all benefit from to inspect our  
plans and oversee our job sites, not building inspectors from the  
county office who don't know a thing about natural building.

On Jun 25, 2012, at 5:17 PM, Anthony Novelli wrote:

> One more... a permacutlure teacher of mine that had permitted  
> several straw bale structures showed an example of his work in  
> Latin America, where the straw bale walls were left unpinned, had  
> no bond beam, a serious bamboo truss system, and a TILE ROOF. Each  
> of these systems on their own may be fine, but not understanding  
> the shortcomings as well as the strengths of each creates seriously  
> out of balance structural equations when combining them. Cob would  
> have been a superior choice for this kind of roof system, though  
> long unbuttressed or unreinforced cob walls can be problematic as  
> well.