[Cob] Dorothy's Cob home in Texas and Building Codes

[Shannon C. Dealy]

On Mon, 29 Dec 2003, Jeanette Bonoan wrote:

[snip]
> Adobe, it is very frustrating to me that I could drop a minimum of $1500 on
> these classes that provide a wonderful experience and inspiration only to
> find that these buildings do not generally provide electricity or water, and

There is no reason they can't include electricity and water, it just
depends on one's design criteria.  Of course probably most workshops will
not do any plumbing or wiring, as there is a limit to what can be covered,
and there is very little difference between plumbing/wiring a cob building
or a conventional structure.

> have not been approved for residential living. I may be off the mark here,

In some areas there is no approval process / permits, and in others the
criteria is so over the top that many people decide to go renegade rather
than pay out 10x the cost of their building for permits and engineering.

> as I have yet to take these classes, but from what I have read so far, it
> seems that most of the training sites have been play houses, cob walls,
> benches, ovens, etc.  If anyone out there has had any other experience other
> than these, I would absolutely love to hear about it.
[snip]

Many workshops are done on real houses, though most of them are probably
not permitted structures.  Of course there are many areas of the
USA and other countries which have little or no permit requirements.

Shannon C. Dealy      |               DeaTech Research Inc.
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