Cob: RE: breathing wallls.

[goshawk at gnat.net]

I have an interior shower in my superadobe/cob house.
The  shower is cement over the eathfilled bag walls but then cement only goes up about 6 feet, the 
remander two feet on one side, four feet on the other just a lime plaster over the earthplaster.
One thing I did was to allow a lot of air flow thru the shower area. One wall is ferro cement  and 
shaped like a triangle. I've covered the cement with white cement. So far it's been working fine 
(about 4 months now). 
Pat


On 16 May 00, at 11:26, Kelly, Sean wrote:

> Perhaps an interior shower would be a good idea, using thinner, curved,
> non load-bearing cob (or even framed I guess, if one were to be really
> safe...) walls that had tile on the inside so that any moisture buildup
> could go out the open side of the thinner wall?  Dang I gotta get
> building.
> 
> Sean
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bob [mailto:owl at steadi.org]
> Sent: Monday, May 15, 2000 11:52 PM
> To: coblist at deatech.com
> Subject: Cob: breathing wallls.
> 
> 
> Don't we all wish we knew how tiling our cob walls would affect them ten
> or twenty years hence.  I believe it is at present a common practice to
> tile over cob walls in a bathroom.  Probably the tiles have not been there
> long enough  to tell us what they will do to the walls.  Perhaps a 6 to 8
> inch wall would not be so thick that it would hold the moisture in and it
> would "breathe" the moisture back out the side away from the tiles.  That
> might depend on the climate, too. 
> 
>  I wish we had a laboratory that would test such things.  When we get the
> All People's College going I'm sure our environment-technology students
> will want to make such tests and we will get the basic equipment for doing
> such tests. In the meantime it is good to have the Cob Net to exchange
> experiences and ideas. Bob
> 
> 


Pat Newberry
www.gnat.net/~goshawk