Category

Moisture

Jun 09
Love0

Rain, rain, rain

By Cob Building, Moisture

This is an extraordinarily rainy spring. We’ve had so much rainfall so frequently, with so many warnings of flash floods and tornadoes the past number of weeks that it’s been hindering not just our gardens, but local farmers from getting their crops in the ground, too. And of course it’s been washing away all the mulch on our roads here, and slowing down building. At least the cisterns are full.

Every day the past few weeks, it seems that there’s been a warning of severe thunderstorms — never just thunderstorms, always severe thunderstorms. Thankfully they don’t always occur as predicted, or I’m sure my cob walls would have washed away by now.

I write this after another night of rain. The cob walls are very wet and soft to the touch in some spots, and the sun is nowhere to be had, but very thankfully (and surprisingly), there is no rain in the forecast the next two days. I am quite tired of worrying about the weather by now, and I really hope this rain dies down sooner rather than later. There is certainly benefit to having a roof up before your cob walls are built (as this very rainy season shows us), but unfortunately, that wasn’t really an option for me. I’m beginning to wish it was, though!

Jun 05
Love0

The cob wall is growing

By Cob Building, Cob Shelves, Moisture

cobwall01

The cob wall is growing day by day, despite tremendous recent rainstorms.

On Monday night, we suffered a huge storm, with 3.5″ of rain pouring down overnight, complete with blazing lightning and ground-shaking thunder. The following morning, a little flash flood passed through, dropping a whole additional inch of rain within a mere 20 minutes. The whole night and throughout the flood, I feared for the well-being of my house in progress, but the cob walls survived. The walls were covered in tarps (and not fantastically, might I add — there were many gaps/tears for water to enter), and the walls did get soaked, although there was nothing more than surface damage when all was said and done. The walls dried the next day, when the sun decided to come out.

Since that storm, I’ve been on an obsessive lookout for rain and trying to do a better job of tarping up the walls.

But anyway, progress has been brisk. Tom (a.k.a., Treetop), a friend from St. Louis came up on Tuesday night, and it’s been nice to have his extra help. Currently, the walls are sitting at a comfortable three feet in height most of the way around, perhaps even higher in some spots. We banged together and installed a window buck for a southeast-facing window at the beginning of the week, and yesterday, I starting cobbing the first shelf.

windowbuck

The make the shelf, I have been using “corbel cobs”, long, narrow, thin cobs packed with extra straw for tensile strength. These are laid on a level wall and then stitched together at the back, and pinched in the front. The first course hangs off the wall by about an inch, and the next corbel cob courses follow suit. A few more courses and the shelf will extend a good 6-7″ off the wall. This I intend to be a book shelf.

cobshelf00

I estimate that the walls are about 1/3 of the way complete. The sand reserves are getting low, too — looks like I’ll need another nine ton delivery within a week or two!

cobhouse01