Rethink Your Life!
Finance, health, lifestyle, environment, philosophy
The Work of Art and The Art of Work
Kiko Denzer on Art



Cob: foundation

yourfavritelf ofthamall yourfavritelf at hotmail.com
Sat Jul 14 18:23:29 CDT 2001


greetings cob-heads and earth dwellers.  I have been reading books and 
attending slide presentations, messing around with some clay soil and 
thinking alot about cob and natural/sustainable building for about a year 
now. I have the opportunity to build a small structure on some property, 
comunally owned in trade for living there free of rent. i have designed a 
small circular structure and i would like some feedback on these ideas if 
anybody has any. For the foundation, i want to dig a trench 2 ft wide in an 
8 ft radious circle. fill it half way with rocks - tamp - dry fit together a 
stone wall foundation 2ft. wide coming up 1.5 ft. above ground.  then fill 
in the middle of the stone wall with rocks after removing the topsoil. so 
now i have a level rock pad to build on. then set 2x6 floorjoists on edge 
spanning the length of  the pad from one end to another (with braces 
inbetween) the ends of the joidts will land in the middle of the rock wall. 
i want to fill the spaces inbetween the joists with cob to create a thermal 
mass floor, but then lay down wood plank floor boards for ease of cleaning 
and astetics. (by the way, all the wood im talking about here has been 
liberated from construction site waste piles that would otherwise have been 
thrown out. I've also finished the wood with 100% unprocessed bees wax)The 
walls will be built up  1ft. thick on top of the foundation with the joist 
ends burried. as the walls go up, two opposing sides will stop at about 6 
ft. . the other two will go to 12 ft. and will stair up.   I want to run 8 
inch diameter logs/poles across with lots of overhang ( about 2 on each side 
and 1 in the middle on top) creating an a frame roof on a circular building. 
  when the logs are in place i will cob around them to fill in the stairs. 
after this i want to run smaller poles down each side from one end of the 
logs to the other. the cracks between the poles will be filled with cob. on 
top of this will be ceder shakes that i've made from abandoned dead and 
downed ceders at clear cutt sites. ( earth rest their souls)  Does anybody 
think these ideas sound like they would work. I'm sure they'll work but not 
too sure how well. take care
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com