This is a call for information from folks living in cob houses in cold climates – by cold, let’s say places that frequently have below freezing temperatures in the wintertime. If you live in a cob house in an area with cold and/or extended winters, can you describe the construction of your home and your heating system?
How thick are your walls? Do you have any insulation (in the roof, stemwall, floor, etc.?) What is the square footage of your space?
How are you heating your house? How often do you run your stove? Is the home occupied full-time during winter days?
Finally, can you provide average indoor/outdoor temperatures? How comfortable does your cob house stay?
I will followup with some insight into winter conditions in my cob house in the near future.
I’ve been researching small, efficient wood stoves that could replace the rocket stove in my house. Most home wood stove manufacturers’ smallest models heat 800-1000 square feet at a minimum, which is overkill for my less than 200 round foot home. However, the house will probably benefit from the extra oopmh with all of that (cold, cold) thermal mass and lack of insulation. Here are the two top contenders that I have been researching. Continue reading →
Here are a couple of photos of the tiny, super ragamuffin wood stove April and I are using right now. It’s manufactured by the Buckeye Incubator Co. Our setup is extremely tacked together, as you can see — the stovepipe runs out the top half of a double hung window. We didn’t exactly have enough stovepipe, so we straightened out some elbows to make a short straight run for inside the house. Outside, the stack rises a few feet above the eaves and is wired to the rafters to prevent it from shaking in the wind.
We used two perfectly sized sheets of metal (thanks Bob) and cut holes in the middle to seal up the window. Aluminum tape covers the edges and keeps air from sneaking in.
With this little thing, we can get the whole house decently cozy in about thirty minutes.
I’ll be happy to have a better quality stove in the house!
My friends Mark and Alyson, who live at Red Earth Farms, are recruiting interns for the 2010 season. They are looking for help with their natural building project, a lovely straw bale barn/house, and with their various gardening and homestead projects. If you are looking for experience, please read their call for internships ahead!
In our journey back home to Dancing Rabbit, April and I brainstormed ideas of how we could better button up the house for winter. At the time, the house was in the 30s, the rocket stove was clearly not going to keep us warm, and we didn’t have plans in place for a temporary stove yet. We expected to be cold. But we wanted to do what we could to make things more comfortable.
I have officially proclaimed the rocket stove “not working”. The stove simply does not draw on days without the right wind direction/intensity. It is unreliable. Even when the wind is right, the stove takes too long to heat up (even the barrel itself!) At times, it smokes into the house, which is added frustration.
Something is not right, unfortunately. The stove just does not keep the house warm. When April was home alone in December, she struggled to keep the indoor temperature in the 40s! That is not really livable.
After a week of travel in early January, I returned home to Dancing Rabbit… to cloudy, gray, cold Missouri. After days of thick clouds, the Common House’s power system was depleted and we went powerless (for the first time on this solar system) for five full days! Whoa.
Anyway, I have a fair amount of news to write about, but I have an inbox full of email to get to… It’s piled up after not being checked for two weeks…
But once I have a cool minute, there is some news regarding the rocket stove, winter conditions in the cob house, and future plans for home heat. Stay tuned! It’s been an interesting past couple of weeks…
This post might seem a little random, but I stumbled across this video and was floored by how complicated the manufacturing process for this simple soccer ball (sorry, football for the rest of the world) is. The amount of technology, machinery, computers, and undoubtedly, energy going on here is HUGE.
Remember that this is a mere football. A ball. Filled with air.
Then imagine how complex the manufacturing process is for other seemingly everyday objects.
I watched this and had to think about my house, made mostly out of sand and clay, which was built almost entirely by hand. The level of technology in my whole house seems to pale in comparison! (Ok, so there are some materials in the house [windows, the EPDM] that are probably quite complex to manufacture, but still…)
Ever since I started building my house, I’ve thought about writing a book about the process of building. Now that my house is actually complete, I’m thinking more seriously about the prospect. The possibilities seem numerous, and the prospect is exciting. I’ve kept up this website and an actual written journal very obsessively so that I have clear documentation, and I also have plenty of photos of the entire construction, as well.
Hullo. I am Brian, but I am also called Ziggy. I'm a 25-year-old currently living at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage. In April of 2008, I began building my own cob house. Here I shall document the entire cob building process. This is the Year of Mud.
