[Cob] Pier foundation?

[Brad Calvert]

Why not the walls on a concrete (steel reinforced) trench footing, stepped
along the slopes.

If you're building along the contour you run the risk of the building
becoming a dam wall and water accumulating uphill.  If you build
perpendicular to the contours (ie. up/down the hill) maybe some kind of
split-level design, but it would have plenty of steps with that 1:4
gradient.

It does sound rather steep to me, I guess it all depends how far you plan to
deviate from the natural slope.  A long narrow building following a countour
might be an idea, but drainage could be the problem.

I'd be interested to know about cob building on slopes.

-----Original Message-----
From: coblist-bounces at deatech.com [mailto:coblist-bounces at deatech.com]On
Behalf Of Paul
Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 4:58 PM
To: coblist at deatech.com
Subject: [Cob] Pier foundation?


Can anyone tell me if they have heard of anyone using a pier foundation for
a cob building?  I'm going to be building on a slope that falls about 5 feet
for every 20 feet of distance and I am having trouble designing the house
with the constraint that the floors need to be on the ground (or a concrete
slab - which I don't want to do).  It would seem to me that cob would be too
heavy for concrete piers, unless the piers were very close together.  Also,
I'm going to be pouring an adobe floor, so that makes a heavy building even
heavier.

Paul
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