I’ve had a decent chance to feel out Twin Oaks during my visit these past few days. This was my first time visiting the commune. I’ve never actually spent time at any intentional communities other than Dancing Rabbit, which is where I’ve been living for over a year and a half. (This could be considered [...]
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The Year of Mud: new cob house building blog
I’ve been toying away the past few days on getting this website a bit more organized, and I’m happy to say that I have finished making a new cob building-specific blog: The Year of Mud.
From this point on, I will only post my cob house updates, progress, and photos on The Year of Mud. Please [...]
Reciprocal roof video: removing the charlie stick
By sheer chance, I found this YouTube video in which several builders remove the ‘charlie stick’, or temporary support for a reciprocal roof frame. It looks like it is perhaps Tony Wrench’s account, but unfortunately he has no other videos about the building process. But this is indeed helpful! It gives me clues about the [...]
A goal was set
I set a goal to finish the cob walls of my house before I left Dancing Rabbit for a visit to New Jersey come July 12. I thought this would be possible several weeks ago, when progress was very brisk, but with last week’s rain, I suffered a setback. Granted, there is absolutely no reason [...]
A bit more rain…
I didn’t get a heck of a lot of time to work on the cob house since it was very wet and gray and rainy throughout much of the past six days. I must say that it’s a real drag constantly worrying about the weather and covering up the walls every night with tarps, and [...]
Building a lean-to trestle
Over the weekend, I built a lean-to trestle. The cob walls are getting too tall in some spots to work from the ground. I’ve been using a long bench that Thomas kindly lent to me, but I needed at least one other (and taller) option to reach high up.
I based this trestle off of a [...]
Another cob house picture update
The house is starting to feel much more like an actual house now that some of the walls are 6+ feet tall. Standing inside, it’s also easier to imagine what the final house will look like, where things will go, and how big the space feels.
Tiny House Blog
Tiny House Blog is a website dedicated to featuring tiny houses (er, go figure), including both prefabs and natural building designs. Anyway, they just put up a link to my own cob cottage project.
Yea!
Latest cob house pictures
Ok, I think I was wrong about the 12-16″ of cob on the walls… it actually is a little more than that, it seems! Check it out:
Here’s the lovely 5′x4.5′ south plate glass, with work exchanger Adam proudly displaying the setup. I was nervous about sticking that large a piece of glass on the cob, [...]
First windows in cob wall
The past several days (or week) have been busy, quite busy, in fact. I feel like I’m just now catching my breath. I missed taking photos for a few days for whatever reason, but I was sure to snap some today of the progress on my cob house, of which there has been much lately. [...]
Rates of cobbing
Lately, I have been trying to estimate how long it will take to build the cob walls of my cottage. I haven’t been doing anything very scientific to make my guess, just figuring a number based on the number of batches stomped for Ironweed kitchen (another cob/straw bale structure here at Dancing Rabbit), which took [...]
Cobbers thumbs
The great thing about cob is its low-tech nature. You don’t need many fancy tools to work with the medium. Cobbers thumbs are useful wooden hand tools for pounding cob into place on walls, and “stitching” the material together. The fat, blunt ends are good for the pounding, and the pointed ends are useful for [...]
