Rethink Your Life! Finance, health, lifestyle, environment, philosophy |
The Work of Art and The Art of Work Kiko Denzer on Art |
|
|
Cob helpthenewbie / Cost of Cob buildingsShannon C. Dealy dealy at deatech.comSun Nov 15 00:08:32 CST 1998
On Thu, 12 Nov 1998, Andrew Felger wrote: > hello > My name is andy felger and i am hoping to construct a cob dwelling > anywhere from a tool shed to an organic agriculture resource center. [snip] > bother with cob I need to find money to fund this project. The [snip] To build with cob, you do not necessarily need any money. I am currently putting up a small $ 0.00 per square foot cob building. To do this I used rock from the property for the foundation, soil from the building site for the sand/clay mix (it is far from the ideal mix but it is useable), I harvest grass from around the building site to use as the straw/fiber, and the roof supports will be small trees or large branches from the property which were blown down or are dead from other causes. As a temporary measure in order to have a usable building this year, I am going to use large glass bottles lying on their sides in a cob matrix to make the windows, roof it with some scrap galvanized roofing, and hang my cob mixing tarp across the entrance as a temporary door (OK, the tarp cost me one or two dollars :-) Next year I'm planning on redoing the roof with thatch using plants from the property, and making the door from local materials as well. I'm still looking into whether or not I can make any kind of window glass from the locally available minerals. If you aren't limiting yourself to natural materials from the surrounding land like I am for my final finished building, there are lots of possibilities for using materials that people throw away or recycle. If you want to build, all you really need is a place to put the building. Shannon C. Dealy dealy at deatech.com
|