Cob: RE: commercial clay- Urban Earth Building

Fri Jun 13 08:36:14 CDT 2003

Kat:

Thanks so much for sharing your experiences with the building. I myself have come to believe that one of the most important aspects of human development is to learn to work with your hands. I have spent years studying the effects of moving energy through the hands and how the hands shape spiritual expression.(Puppetry) I work in the public schools here in Detroit, and one of the things that I have advocated for years is the teaching of hand drumming to elementary school children. There have been studies that correlate complex hand patterning with advanced ability in math. Drumming hooks the developing childs brain up in ways that promote learning. I have also worked extensively with grown up kids who haven't yet learned to use their hands. (It is interesting too that most of these young people could be considered emotionally or developmentally handicapped.) It is heartening to watch as the process works its magic and forges for them a new sense of identity and place in the world. Students will bring people back stage to point out their specific contributions to the whole. (I made these rocks. I carved the hands on this one. Did you like the hands?) 

Of interest for this list is that I have found certain materials in puppetmaking to be better conductors of a puppeteer's performance energy than others and have tried to incorporate these into my puppets. They are wood, stone (earth),and metal, the very materials with which we find it most satisfying to build.

Kat I fully sympathise with your situation. It can be miserable to be around someone who is remaking themselves and doesn't understand what is happening to them. Training of the body and mind will often provoke extreme mental anguish. And the best that you can do is to hope that they don't point that thing (their attitude)at you. However to be fully human we all must learn to build, to make, and create. This may be the most important thing they have ever done.

A little note on suburbia. I have been getting the weekly paper for the little town I now live by. It amazes me almost every week. Two weeks ago I read about a law about governing how high ones weeds could be and everyone was put on notice that there would be a crew out to cut yours down, if they exceeded a certain number of inches. Then the town would charge you $75.00/ hr. Well I chuckled at that but here is the new one. It seems Michigan has a law that says you can't collect property taxes on a manufactured home in a trailer park. So townships throughout the state are assessing the value of peoples sheds and decks, to charge them taxes. Wow! The state admits there is no value in a double wide trailer but attempts to tax the poorest people on their sheds! Now I wonder what value they would put on the shed if it was made of earth. If it cost you nothing to build, is it worth nothing and therefore untaxable? How can this be happening in a Republic that was founded on tax revolt? We may need some workshops up here to teach the populus to build untaxable earth sheds. Amazing and I thought I had been around the world and seen it all!

Michael Fitzgerald
Anthropologist/Woodcarver/Puppetmaker
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<P>Cat here, lived in NYC, lived in San Francisco, now I live in rural WV.  Everywhere homeless and near homeless.  My crew consists of future street people, not children not adults, all different except attitude.  They trust no one even their friends, they don't have any expectations, the world represents the enemy.  They work for money to by cigarettes, beer, and other forms of escape.   They are independent, arrogant, volatile, isolated and injured.   I romantically see them as Americas lost potential.  Right now they are hooked on daily wages, paid only when they show up, and lunch.   I am thinking that if my finances hold out they will help me build my house and build some dreams and skills for themselves.    I have seen just that happen in Puerto Rico and Buffalo NY. when people take back their power to create!</P>
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<P>Don't get me wrong here I'm no charity, I need them as much as they need me and that is what makes it good.  So far only one knock down drag out with blood and stitches, and a few rough verbel attitude adjustments.  Not much in the way of rules just letting it happen and see what grows.  The process of building this thing is becoming more important to me than having it done!  </P>
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<P>Quidvis Recte Factum Quamvis Humile Praeclarum</P>
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<P>for the good of all Cat<BR><BR></P>
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<DIV></DIV>>From: puppetman at ix.netcom.com 
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<DIV></DIV>>Reply-To: puppetman at ix.netcom.com 
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<DIV></DIV>>To: coblist <COBLIST at DEATECH.COM>
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<DIV></DIV>>Subject: Re: Cob: RE: commercial clay- Urban Earth Building 
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<DIV></DIV>>Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 10:06:46 -0400 (EDT) 
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<DIV></DIV>>Hi Brad; 
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<DIV></DIV>>You have some of the same concerns that I have been thinking about here in the Detroit, MI, USA area. I am in the process of moving out of an economically depressed, and racially segregated city, where they are tearing down about 200 houses a week during the deconstruction season. Yet we have many homeless people who live in cardboard boxes and old cars on lots where they just tore down a house! Material for repairs for these 100 year old houses cost more than what many with jobs can afford. And the housing stock in the city contiues to deteriorate. Clearly there is a need for houses that are affordable and that can be maintained with affordable materials. Building with earth would seem to be a good solution until you factor in the size of the average city lot and the basic amount of earth the average city lot owner has to work with. 
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<DIV></DIV>>Some solutions I have considered but have not been able to implement. 
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<DIV></DIV>>Idea 1: In our area there has been a suburban fad of having small fish ponds put into the yard. The smaller ones redistribute the earth to support the little plastic pond. The larger ones however sometimes require the earth to be removed. Usually in small 3 yard dump trucks that might easily be enough material to keep you going for a week or two. Do you need a fish pond? Are there landscapers in your area that might need to get rid of some earth on a regular but small unit basis? 
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<DIV></DIV>>Idea 2: Fill dirt- There is a lot of construction in Suburbia here. The newspaper adds weekly have an Absolutely Free section where there is always free fill dirt. I haven't checked this out yet but I figure it this way. This fill must have a high clay content, otherwise these builders would be selling it to the cement companies as sand. It might be worth taking a shake jar over to a free fill dirt site and doing a quick test. 
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<DIV></DIV>>Idea 3: This is the one I have been persuing. Compressed Earth Block- Here is a URL for a fairly comprehensive report on CEBs. 
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<DIV></DIV>> http://www.gtz.de/basin/publications/books/CEBVol1.pdf 
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<DIV></DIV>>Land in suburbia where I just purchased a home goes for about $30,000.00 an acre. Land 100 miles away routinely goes for $1-3,000.00/ acre. You could set up a one acre brickyard and make very transportable CEB units for use on your city lot for the price of a few dump truck loads of clay and sand. You own the property (and new fish pond!) to boot. 
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<DIV></DIV>>These are just some musings on the question, theory rather than practical experience. Has anybody else tried to build with earth in an urban environment. How do you deal with issues of material and "the hole"? 
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<DIV></DIV>>I just got my Cinva Ram this week and have made a few test bricks. This is so far from cob it is almost embarrassing to discuss it on this list-serve. Interesting enough it is starting to win my wife to "earth building". The bricks are very smooth, very straight, and look infinitely more tame than a cob loaf with straw sticking out of it. She will withold full judgement until I can present a cured block in a few weeks. The girls promise to help me make blocks this weekend. 
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<DIV></DIV>>Happy Mudding, and Bright Blessings 
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<DIV></DIV>>Michael Fitzgerald 
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<DIV></DIV>>Anthropologist/Woodcarver/Puppetmaker 
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<DIV></DIV>>I live in suburbia and don't really need to dig a big hole in the ground. 
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