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The Work of Art and The Art of Work Kiko Denzer on Art |
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[Cob] Cob in OhioMarlin Nissen marlin_nissen at yahoo.comTue May 2 14:55:17 CDT 2006
First of all I agree with his thought about the lack of insulation - Cob is mass and when mass is kept cold long enuff i.e. long northern winters, it takes a lot of added heat to feel warm on the inside - burn wood or something and a lot of it for a long time. You'll get a few suggestions, likely most will include wrapping cob around an insulation layer, like a straw bale wall. That makes a large wall especially if you're doing both a cob wall inside and outside of the SB wall - lots of thickness! You might, at that point, just build a load bearing SB wall - - - - BUT...if you want to still build a curved, sculpted wall: My pet idea (I admit) is to build a cordwood type project that still uses cob as the mortar. Don't know how familiar you are but a cobwood wall is just 2 cob walls that are bridged by wood (in this case cut firewood stuff) with insulation in the middle of the two walls - around the wood elements that span the two walls. To take this a step further I would like to see the cordwood replaced with cutoff construction scrap (kiln dried 2x4s) from the dumpsters at all the un-natural building going on in the suburbs around most American cities...the cutoff scraps are uniform, completely dry (no shrinkage - that's a pain), they're easy to chop saw to EXACT lengths and you can cover over the ends of the wall with more cob/plaster so you don't know that the wood ever existed(or paint them or arrange them in some type of symmetry),,,,,voila you have a 'Cob' wall! And you mix MUCH less cob then a similarily sized Cob wall. Also having wood behind the plaster wall every few inches provides great anchor points to screw things into. We call it 'Cob Scrap'....... Looks just like a Cob wall, only with insulation (determine how wide an insulation gap you need). Still takes advantage of the ease of the technicalities/flexibility of building that is Cob! P.S. I would make the inside of the 2 walls MUCH thicker then the outside one as the INSIDE mass of cob will be part of your thermal mass....but all the heat won't bleed to the outside wall and to the outside world.....The outside wall is mostly a stability and plaster layer. The inside wall will then be your load bearer etc. Best, Marlin --- Rob Lewis <RLewis at davmail.org> wrote: > I have been consulting with a green architect who > has advised me not to > build with cob. This is because the area where I > live, northern > Kentucky/SW Ohio, is, according to him, unsuitable > for cob. His main > concern is winter temps and r-factor/insulation > issues. Is there any way > to salvage my dream of building cob on my property? > > _______________________________________________ > Coblist mailing list > Coblist at deatech.com > http://www.deatech.com/mailman/listinfo/coblist > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
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