small-scale: life in an ecovillage

The cob wall is growing day by day, despite tremendous recent rainstorms.

On Monday night, we suffered a huge storm, with 3.5″ of rain pouring down overnight, complete with blazing lightning and ground-shaking thunder. The following morning, a little flash flood passed through, dropping a whole additional inch of rain within a mere 20 minutes. The whole night and throughout the flood, I feared for the well-being of my house in progress, but the cob walls survived. The walls were covered in tarps (and not fantastically, might I add — there were many gaps/tears for water to enter), and the walls did get soaked, although there was nothing more than surface damage when all was said and done. The walls dried the next day, when the sun decided to come out.

Since that storm, I’ve been on an obsessive lookout for rain and trying to do a better job of tarping up the walls.

But anyway, progress has been brisk. Tom (a.k.a., Treetop), a friend from St. Louis came up on Tuesday night, and it’s been nice to have his extra help. Currently, the walls are sitting at a comfortable three feet in height most of the way around, perhaps even higher in some spots. We banged together and installed a window buck for a southeast-facing window at the beginning of the week, and yesterday, I starting cobbing the first shelf.

The make the shelf, I have been using “corbel cobs”, long, narrow, thin cobs packed with extra straw for tensile strength. These are laid on a level wall and then stitched together at the back, and pinched in the front. The first course hangs off the wall by about an inch, and the next corbel cob courses follow suit. A few more courses and the shelf will extend a good 6-7″ off the wall. This I intend to be a book shelf.

I estimate that the walls are about 1/3 of the way complete. The sand reserves are getting low, too — looks like I’ll need another nine ton delivery within a week or two!

Yesterday, I mixed the first batches of cob with the help of my new work exchanger Adam and my friend Sara from New Roots in St. Louis. We made three total batches and applied them to the foundation, getting about 1/3 of the way around the building perimeter. It felt pretty amazing to be stomping those first batches for my very own cob home. It’s been less than a month since we started digging the trench.

Since the wall is so low to the ground right now, you can walk on the foundation and pack the cob by foot. Normally, you would use your hands or a cobbers thumb, but using your feet can be pretty effective, too.

Today, I got a dump truck full of sand delivered, which turned out to be a slightly traumatic experience. The truck got stuck in the road trying to back up into my warren. The roads here are very soft - they are pretty much just mulch on top of earth - not very good for heavy vehicle traffic. The driver was forced to dump the sand partly in the road, a good 25 yards from where I really wanted the material. I spent the morning moving all nine tons of the sand by wheelbarrow to my warren with the great help of very willing friends. I guess it could have been worse. But it was quite painful to see that dump truck tearing up the dirt road and making a bit of a mess.

But anyway, we got another four batches of cob onto the foundation this afternoon, nearly completing a single course around the foundation. I have a feeling the cobbing of the walls will go much faster than I originally anticipated. It feels great.