Cob: nc cobbers and codes

Thu Jan 23 11:46:15 CST 2003

I too live in North Carolina, outside Banner Elk at about 3600'.

I first read about cob 5 years ago in an issue of Mother Earth News and thought it was a bit eccentric as far as building a house. At the time I lived in a victorian house (circa 1885) located in Dayton, OH and was concentrating on standard building methods that were exceptable in a historic district. Now, though, I've moved back to the mountains of NC and have land on which to build and cob has come back to my attention.

I've spent the last two months lurking on this list and reading the archives to have a better basis on which to design a house. I've also been contacting people that may be able to help such as the applied technology department at Appalachian State Uni., Kleiworks, Appropriate Building Solutions (http://www.buildsustainable.com/pages/945693/index.htm?gen_time=1032198701940)
and other people who are basiscally renegade building. 

There are numerous code questions to be answered here in Avery County since no one to my knowledge has built a cob house here before. My plan is to put together an educational packet of information that will help me educate the building inspector without alienating him. Part of this plan is to build a small barn for the goats in my future as a kind of example and as a practice piece to help educate me. My soil appears to have the right clay and sand content once I have dug down a few feet so I'm going to try a few more tests first.

One question I have right now is about the use of rock in the cob wall. Here in Avery county we are filthly with rock of all sizes. You can't dig without finding large stones. Obviously I would want to use stone in my foundation and knee wall but what about using it in the wall proper to lessen the amount of cob needed with which to build. Would this present structural problems?

Thanks for patience during this long introduction.

Phil Hawn

 --- On Sun 01/19, Kristen Wilson < kewilson403 at hotmail.com > wrote:
From: Kristen Wilson [mailto: kewilson403 at hotmail.com]
To: tenortime at msn.com, coblist at deatech.com
Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2003 15:45:37 -0500
Subject: Re: Cob: nc cobbers and codes

Hi Michael and all - I'm not sure if my two previous posts made it to 
everyone, but I'm a new member mostly listening, interested in cob and 
wanting to attend a workshop soon. I took Michael's advice and looked up 
Earthaven outside Black Mountain, NC (I'm in Chapel Hill, NC) and found they 
have a cob workshop planned June 5-8. I've emailed them for more information 
- hope it goes through, the first was bounced back to me. I'll share what I 
find out.
Kristen

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> --- Begin Attached Message---
<html><div style='background-color:'><DIV>I have no idea how to get by the codes.  I am thinking that I will end up either building on teh back of my property out of sight or building a wood frame with cob infill.  There is a person on this list that is in NC and who built a round cob house.  Im not sure who she is but maybe she will respond and let us know what she did.  As for the others asking about workshops in NC.  I konw that there is an ecovillage, Earthhaven, that is pretty close to me, up near Black Mountain.  They have a website and are building all kinds of stuff there.  They are also offering some workshops too i think.  In the asheville area there is a company called Kleiworks, not sure if that is spelled correctly.  She does some workshops too I think.  Maybe we all should get together and form cob consortium.  I live in the western part of the state.  I actually build metal buildings so I have some materials let over that I could use I guess.  Email me if you are interested in talking about NC cobbing.  </div>
<DIV> </div></div><br clear=all><hr> <a href="http://g.msn.com/8HMQEN/2015">get 2 months FREE*</a> </html>

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