Cob:

[Amanda Peck]

You've avoided one of my pet peeves, having to go through the kitchen to get 
to a bedroom (or bathroom, by the way).  I like the idea of being able to 
open up rooms to the outside.

When you're building a stick house, you can frequently get by not worrying 
about the width of the walls.  But cob--or straw bale--is another story.  
That two feet or so wall width can make a dramatic difference in the size of 
things like u-shaped porches and the basic appearance of a house with long 
narrow sections.

Long narrow sections also add to the length of foundation and wall you are 
going to have to build.  You could stick-build, or even do some sort of pole 
barn construction for those long hallways.

I woke up the other morning--having been quite warm in my comforter--to find 
ice in the dogs' water dish.  And a friend closer to the highway has gotten 
up to shattered frozen pipes twice this winter.  Neither of us have 
cob--poorly insulated travel trailer that I didn't get around to setting 
straw bales around the bottom edge, a basically uninsulated old house, but 
we're better than a hundred miles south of anywhere in Kentucky. Make sure 
that there's heat in your kitchen, and the pipes are insulated, protected 
against freezing, and not going to ruin your walls if the worst does happen.


Jill wants comments on her floor plan on this web site:

www.on-callnurses.com/cob.htm


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