Here’s a normal cob wall (with no/near zero significant water damage):
And another wall that has been pelted in a flash flood:
The damage isn’t that significant (it’s just surface runoff), but it sure still bugs me…
Posts Tagged ‘natural building’
Back to… the rain
Rainiest year. Ever.
When I left DR three weeks ago, I figured all that rain we’ve been experiencing had left us, too, but boy was I wrong. Yesterday, we experienced yet another incredible flash floor, dumping a good 2″ or so of rain on us in less than half an hour. We just can’t seem to [...]
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.
Sculpting with cob
If there’s one thing you’ve probably heard/read about cob many times before, it’s probably the fact that cob is immensely sculptural.
Lately, I have been working at a much slower pace since I have been working on sculpting various cob book shelves and other little storage nooks into the walls of my house. The photo above [...]
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!
Meka’s cob cottage video
Here’s a little video showing off a gorgeously designed cob cottage interior by Meka in southern Oregon. Beautiful curves, built-in shelves and furniture, and a wild staircase design are the highlights.
Three feet and rising
Ok, so my original estimate of 100 total batches of cob to complete the walls may have been off.
Eighty plus batches later, the walls stand at an average height of 3.5′ (not including the foundation), which is probably half the total amount of cob necessary. Some taller spots are now no longer workable without standing [...]
The cobbing workflow
I thought I might touch upon the actual cobbing process, since I haven’t really talked about that specific element of building very much. Over the past few weeks, we have developed a very efficient working system, allowing us to quickly stomp, loaf, and apply the cob to the walls.
It begins with a “burrito”, the final [...]
Rain, rain, rain
This is an extraordinarily rainy spring. We’ve had so much rainfall so frequently, with so many warnings of flash floods and tornadoes the past number of weeks that it’s been hindering not just our gardens, but local farmers from getting their crops in the ground, too. And of course it’s been washing away all the [...]
