Cob: Interior walls

[Shannon C. Dealy]

On Mon, 10 Mar 2003, Briggs WebDesign wrote:

> Shannon,
> what would the limit be for an S - curved wall? This organic look is what
> my wife really loves from the
> cob homes she has seen...if we were going to use all straight walls we
> would be using cordwood.
>
> BTW, when I say limit, I mean the depth of the curve against the overall
> wall lenght/height.  I am assuming that the deeper the curve, the more
> stable the wall.  Is there some way to quantify this?
[snip]

I'm afraid I don't have any numbers for this one, though my gut feeling is
that a single "S" curve on an interior wall of any reasonable length
should be significantly more stable than a solid wall that is as thick as
the "S" version would have been.  In other words, if you were to
stick a long straight edge across the outside edges of the curves
on each side fo the wall and measure between them, I believe that
the wall would be more stable than (though not as strong as) a straight
wall of this equivalent thickness.  Of course if you use a really long
wall, like an exterior garden wall, you would either want multiple S's or
need to go deeper on the curve (possibly both) for maximum stability.

Maybe John Fordice has some thoughts on this if he's listening?

Shannon C. Dealy      |               DeaTech Research Inc.
dealy at deatech.com     |          - Custom Software Development -
                      |    Embedded Systems, Real-time, Device Drivers
Phone: (800) 467-5820 | Networking, Scientific & Engineering Applications
   or: (541) 451-5177 |                  www.deatech.com