The Year of Mud: Building a cob house » urbanite

Urbanite foundation (mostly) complete

ziggy — Thu, 15 May 2008 23:28:21 +0000

The foundation is now mostly complete with the addition of a third course on the west side of the building. The past few days have been spent trying to piece together that topmost course with the remaining urbanite, and stuffing additional nooks with a clay/sand mortar. The construction of the foundation has gotten funkier over time since we used all the nice flat pieces at the start, and all that was left for the third course was the irregular stuff.

The mortar mix is kinda tricky to work with because of its high sand content (about 3:1); it’s very gritty and difficult to jam into tight spaces. I’m glad now that there are only a handful of cracks remaining. But it sure does feel great not using any nasty new cement mix!

On Monday, I hope to get a delivery of sand to begin cobbing the walls. Look out!

Continuing work on urbanite foundation

ziggy — Tue, 13 May 2008 16:02:16 +0000

Progress on the cob house has been continuing at a good clip. The second course of the foundation has been laid out. We started to run out of larger pieces of urbanite, and fell back on medium and smaller pieces, which I thought to be less than ideal. Unfortunately, the majority of the urbanite I have collected is very irregularly shaped, so it’s trickier to work with than flat stuff. I think it will be fine, though.

We started to fill in the cracks between urbanite with more clay/sand mortar. Whenever there is rain in the forecast, I throw tarps over the entire foundation to prevent it from getting went. The mortar would probably just wash away if it got thoroughly soaked. But anyway, the purpose of the mortar is to prevent the passage of wind and rodents into the living space. Eventually, the interior face of the foundation will be cobbed over or plastered over to for extra protection.

Yesterday, my first work exchanger arrived. It will be fun to have new help around the work site.

On Friday, I hope to get sand delivered, because I expect cobbing will begin within another week… yeehaw!

First course of foundation complete

ziggy — Tue, 06 May 2008 22:56:37 +0000

The first course of the foundation is now pretty much complete.

Unfortunately, I had nowhere near enough urbanite that I thought I needed, and I made another trip to collect more over the weekend. This second time I played it safe and filled the trailer about twice as much as the first go-round, hopefully insuring that I would have more than plenty.

Yesterday, I ran into a little snag in the assembly of the foundation when I realized I needed a massive slab of urbanite for underneath the door frame. Either that or I could spend some time attempting to level a couple of smaller, very uneven pieces. Forget that, I thought.

I went into Rutledge with four others, thinking we could heft an appropriately massive, flat slab I spotted earlier that day. Apparently not. It was hugely heavy. Instead, Brandon, a (very proactive!) visitor got Zimmermans Excavating (which was just down the road) to bring their backhoe and lift the piece into the pickup truck. We drove back to DR and to my warren, backed up to the spot in the foundation where the piece needed to be, and tipped the slab off the truck bed onto the ground, and then wiggled and walked the piece into its final resting place and then leveled it. That single piece of urbanite was probably three to four times the size of any other piece we had collected.

Later that day, Jeff and I stomped the first batch of earthen mortar (clay sand mortar) at a ratio of three buckets of sand to one clay. This we used to fill in the gaps (think cement mortar) between urbanite, along with gravel and smaller chunks of concrete. Today, we pretty much completed the first course and began stacking pieces for the second, final course.

I suspect this second course will be much trickier…

Building the urbanite foundation

ziggy — Fri, 02 May 2008 22:18:00 +0000

Two days ago, I went on a trip to collect urbanite (think broken up concrete from sidewalks and roadbeds) in a small town about twenty miles away. Thankfully, four willing folks offered their help in picking up the material. Urbanite is extremely heavy and you don’t want to move it more than you have to.

After an hour of collecting the concrete, we were physically exhausted. Unfortunately, we could not back up the pickup truck with trailer directly next to the huge pile — instead, it was about a twenty yard walk to the trailer, which made it that much more difficult. After unloading the urbanite at my work site, I was quite wiped out.

The next day, Jeff (my work exchanger) and I started assembling the concrete into the shape of the foundation wall, which is to be about 18″ thick. Working with the urbanite is almost like playing Tetris — you need to carefully find the right pieces to match up and fit together. Before starting, I thought I might have enough to finish the whole thing — boy, I was off. I didn’t even have enough to finish a single course:

So, it looks like I will have to make yet another exhausting trip.

Once the first course is laid out, I will make a clay/sand mortar at a ratio of four buckets of sand to one bucket of clay. This will fill the cracks between stones, preventing the entry of rodents, and blocking the passage of wind. Normally, one might use a cement mortar mix, but I am pretty opposed to using concrete in this building (unless it is recycled). (Fun fact: concrete is the second most consumed substance on earth, right behind water.) I hope the clay/sand mix will be sufficient.

If all goes well, I might start cobbing within a couple of weeks.

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