[Cob] Looking for answers

[Marlin Nissen]

As a longtime NON contributor, who started quited awhile ago with the rebirth of the Cob movement years ago - just thought I'd pipe in with my experiences.

Doing traditional Cob, with your back situation, sounds backbreaking. IF you can get a lot of free/volunteer labor it's not so backbreaking. YOUR back sounds very iffy for this type of design if you don't have other people doing the heavy lifting. 

With that said there are ways to build with mechanization and time/energy savers. I have thought a lot about this for MY future project/cabin and made some little experiments (See last paragraph). I do NOT want to spend 13 years building it for instance and do NOT want to mix all that Cob in the traditional way by myself etc.

The reality of getting 50-100 able bodied folks together for a couple/more of entire summers to volunteer enough of their time to build a structure seems unlikely for most in our culture. There are places/situations where this can happen of course.

Another way to mitigate the "down side" of building with Cob (in traditional style) is to get very creative. I plan to use some combo of Cordwood, Cob, Earth Bags, mechanized mixing/foot mixing, local natural and recycled wood to accomplish my project. Not hinging ALL my hopes on collecting a large group of volunteers and doing everything traditionally in terms of Cob. 

One of the very best Words of Wisdom regarding owner-builder tings that I heard and retaught: "Try whatever you're planning on a small scale, almost a model - shed etc., that incorporates smaller doable elements of what your 'dream' project consists of. You'll learn what you need to learn, tweak plans etc. and actually accomplish something useful in the process"

Best to you and don't want you to be completely discouraged from what can be such a transformative experience!

Marlin Nissen



________________________________
 From: Dorothy Bothne <dbothne54 at yahoo.com>
To: "jhouston58 at gmail.com" <jhouston58 at gmail.com>; "coblist at deatech.com" <coblist at deatech.com> 
Sent: Friday, March 1, 2013 9:47 AM
Subject: Re: [Cob] Looking for answers
 


Jeff,
the work is backbreaking hard. especially if you have to lift the cob up to top of tall walls (our home is 2 story).   we've been working on our cob home, mostly weekends, for 13 years, I think we'll finally be ready to move in this summer.  we're working on interior finish.
we arranged for workers to help because we can't do all of this physically ourselves.  one good point is that it's the type of work that doesn't require a lot of skill,  we used my young adult kid's and their friends who were in the late teens and early twenties - all unskilled labor.  it provided a chance for me to teach these young people regarding project management and sense of accomplishment and importance of sustainable design.  We provided lunch, sometimes dinner and had a lot of fun getting covered in mud.  we nickname the young guys and gals who lift the cob up to the cobber our mules.
I can send you photos's if you like, and can answer any other questions offline.  we're in Texas, just north of the Austin area.
Dorothy


________________________________
From: Jeff Houston <jhouston58 at gmail.com>
To: coblist at deatech.com 
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2013 5:35 PM
Subject: [Cob] Looking for answers

I have a few questions about Cob building. I hope someone can help me out or point me in the right directions. First off is I have a bad back. In fact I am on disability because of it. I can do minor things, but lifting heavy objects repeatedly is definitely not one of them. So my main question is, exactly HOW hard is it to build one of these? I love the idea, and love the concept. I would LOVE to build one of these myself but I am just not sure I am physically able to do it. I was hoping someone could give me an idea of exactly how strenuous, particularly on the back this process is. I do plan to get some help, and maybe they could do the bulk of the heavy stuff but I am just not one to sit around and watch and most likely would try to jump in and do some things I will regret the next day. I dont want to continually be doing something thats gonna lay me up for a few days before I can jump back into it. Now for my next question. I am in North Carolina
and have been scouring the internet for some workshops here in NC. I found one but the scheduled date for it was like 2011 I think it was, several years ago:) So I think I missed that one! Does anyone know of some ACTIVE resources in North Carolina that I could get up with? It seems everyone I have found online have not been around very much in the last year or two. I apreciate any and all help I can get on either of these two subjects!

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