[Cob] Cob plumbing, wiring

[Shannon C. Dealy]

On Tue, 30 Dec 2003, Guy Koehler, Rivendell Ranch wrote:

> "there is very little difference between plumbing/wiring a cob building or a
> conventional structure." Shannon C. Dealy
>
> I've been thinking about this. Traditionally, both plumbing and wiring goes
> inside the frame of a stick house. Cob walls are massively thick, from a
> fort and a half to two feet. Kinda hard to place anything inside them, and

Depends on what you want to do, following the stick frame model, they can
simply be placed in the wall as you are building it.

> if one did there would be the issue of getting to them for repair.

As I said, there is very little difference, this is pretty much the only
real difference I can think of, wire / pipe sizes, grounding, plumbing
traps, etc. remain the same regardless.

>
> How do you propose plumbing and wiring in such a way as to meet engineering,
> code and artistic needs?

Given the difficulty of repairs, it may be desireable to route most every
thing in floors and ceilings, or on / just below wall surfaces (possibly
covered with decorative mouldings).  As far as code, if you route
your wiring in conduit (whether it's in the cob walls or on the surface),
your inspector should accept it so long as you use the proper wire types
and sizes.  For plumbing code, I know of no reason why the cob would make
any different in it's acceptance, though I'm alot more familiar with codes
for wiring than plumbing.

Shannon C. Dealy      |               DeaTech Research Inc.
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