Cob: incorporating/recycling other structures

[Amanda Peck]

There WAS an early Out on Bale that I got as part of a package a year or so 
later, in which there was a call for people to come help cover a couple's 
trailer with straw bales.  I think the idea was to do so with a gap, put 
another--well insulated--roof on the whole thing, roofs being the typical 
weak place in a trailer. Presumably plaster only the outside. Maybe put in 
some sort of foundation, unless the trailer was on a slab, not uncommon.  No 
load on the trailer there, the same would work with cob.

Somewhere I saw a house with a handsome, and I hope un-roadworthy, Airstream 
as kitchen, dining room, extra bathroom.  It might have been a book on the 
Jersey Devils artchitecture firm's houses.

My house in Nashville had, except for a later addition, been built using two 
boxcars made surplus after WWI.  Trying to put a screw in the wall was 
difficult because one kept hitting metal, although I never saw metal girders 
underneath, and there was a conventional roof with no extra surface between 
ceiling and ceiling joists.  And it was not at all fun to heat and cool, 
despite what was supposed to have been TVA-approved insulation.
.........
Marsha, Cat, Abe have been thinking about using some sort of 
trailer/bus/shipping container as part of a cob structure.

Marsha wonders if it's strong enough, Cat thinks it should be able to go 
when it wants to, Abe, that it would make a good kitchen/dining room.

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