[Cob] recycled cob bricks

[Predrag Cvetkovic]

First to say: I miss discussions on this group so much and believe no other
form of groups activity on the web can replace it.

Just wanted to share pictures of a small house builded with recycled cob
bricks, I took recently.
It is near village Kaonik, on the road Krusevac - Ribarska Banja, central
Serbia. (South-East Europe). Bricks have been taken from an old broken-down
house from that village Kaonik. I don't like to guess how old that ruined
house was, but think it must be 80 years and more, maybe even much more. It
is amazing these bricks are in such good conditions.

To build that new house, the owner asked help of one person that was
familiar with that way of building (which is very rare in Serbia now).  The
house has concrete foundation and walls have been build with these cob
bricks using earth mortar. They used earth just near the house, I think
earth was of good quality.

I noticed that new house last year, it was about 100m from the road but I
was sure from the first moment that it were cob bricks. It is very, very
rare to see now in Serbia, except maybe in some parts on the south. In most
parts of Serbia, old houses in villages were built as Wattle and daub, and
in North Serbia rammed earth was prevailing.

South of the Serbia was under longer influence of Turkish empire. It seems
cob bricks were popular in old Turkey and probably one of prevailing
methods for building houses (mostly because of their conditions, of
course). Turkish name for cob bricks is "kerpitch", in Serbian we pronounce
something like "cherpitch" where first "ch" is a very soft sound, written
with a special word too.

Here is a short quotation from an old book about that "lack of wood of any
kind in this part of Turkey, all houses in both town and country are built
of mud bricks called “kerpitch,” which is a mixture of mud and straw".

I think that cob wasn't known here in Serbia, except through these cob
bricks, and as I've already mentioned in south Serbia.

I've made a special web page with these pictures and put on my beekeeping
website without any other link except this external:

http://www.pcela.rs/cob_bricks.html

kind regards to all
Predrag