[Cob] RE: cob renovation

[claysandstraw]

Hi Lee - I appreciate your goal of saving your mobile home from the
landfill.  Its important for all of us to work with what we are given rather
than attempting to recreate something using more and more resources.  Having
said that I think the following things are also important things to
consider:
1. the MOST EXPENSIVE thing in your cob project is the TIME you put into it.

2. its neither productive nor efficient to live inside your construction
project.

3. you can recylce things by taking them apart carefully and re-using
materials elsewhere.

4. as Sharon says, your trailer frame will not support cob, you will have to
build a foundation all the way around, 2' wide for the cob.  Then you will
have to add 2'-3' of height in cob to get up to the level of the trailer
floor before you even start your walls.  Thats a heck of a lot of extra cob.

5.then once you build up the cob, you have 20" extra wall outside your
existing wall, so then you will have to extend or redo your roof in order to
protect the cob.

So I have a suggestion.  What about light-straw clay?  Its much much faster
to build and just as natural, you could pack it in between your existing
studs without extra foundation.  You can have your bottles and niches and
earthen plaster.  All you loose is the thermal mass and the thickness of
walls - which you could get in a cob addition.  I would also suggest a
planting screen on the west side to help with summer sun: bamboo or vines
growing on trellis (short term) or cotton woods (fast growing and native)
nurtured by grewater.

Kindra
Austin,TX




>From: "Lee Courtney" <heylee34 at hotmail.com>
>Subject: Re: [Cob] The mobile home...

>Ok it started with wanting/needing a shed. ... <snip>