Building From What is Provided in Nature

[blackox]

This is a topic that I am interested in.

Any experience in building with adobe/cob/rock?

[flowerweaver]

blackox you sure have a lot of my same interests! Along with architect Gayle Borst and a handful of others, I helped build an all woman-built two room cob cabin a couple decades ago. It was once featured on the cover of one of the cob books, but it has since washed away in a flood (the camp funding the project chose the site a bit too close to a creek) and the cover has been changed in subsequent printings.

I was part of a group of people that started the Texas Strawbale Association (now part of the Sustainable Building Coalition) and I have helped build three strawbale homes, managing crews as a 'straw boss' on two of them. I find working with straw bales much easier than cob construction.

[blackox]

I've got a lot of other interests like this. It's just that I don't have the resources/time to pursue many of them.

I've never thought about building with straw bales. They rot fast year but I suppose that they'd last for years in an arid climate. Just simple stacking to build a stawbale home? Do strawbale structures last long in the elements (high winds, anything else that I might encounter in an arid/semi-arid environment?) The only problem that I could imagine with straw is the price. It's expensive here ($5 a bale, maybe I'm just cheap), I can't imagine how much more it would cost in areas with heavy drought.

I remember seeing a tv show a long time ago that was all about off-grid living. They built a house out of cob and then preceded to coat the cob in a solution of house poo.

[steev]

Straw-built is catching on. As for bale-rotting, the keys are proper drainage and plastering; bale-building contractors in NM find ricestraw so superior in durability that they truck it in from NorCal.

[flowerweaver]

Strawbale pays for itself in insulation very quickly, having an R-value of something like 70. Don't confuse straw with hay, which is cut green with seed heads. Straw will not decompose if it is properly used, nor will it attract vermin because there is no seeds. It is usually sealed with a breathable earth-clay coating; here in Texas we use concrete gunnite (for better water proofing) on the outside and the clay on the inside.

The bales are stacked in alternating courses like bricks, and impaled on rebar to hold them together. About every three courses hog panel is cut and laid, and tied with brick ties to it; L's of it are cut for the corners to insure sheer strength in winds. The gaps where they meet can be mudded up so that there is less airspace. A properly plastered wall can withstand 2,000 degrees of heat...there's a video somewhere on the Internet showing this. Basically the clay cracks off leaving a bit of singe, but they are safe. I know someone who was inside one during a tornado and it came down really slowly, enabling him to escape, although the house was trashed.

If you can grow and bale your own straw then it would be very affordable. It's also very easy for women and children to lift, so lends itself to family/community house raising. (Chopping straw to put into cob is very laborious, and cob is very heavy to work with). One of the strawbale houses we built was two story and large and about 50 of us got the walls up over a weekend (the roof and load bearing structure and foundation were already in place).

[steev]

One consideration for me is useable vs taxable square footage; strawbale fares poorly in California, due to a property tax code that skews taxation to new homeowners, protecting previous homeowners. I certainly have premium rice-straw bales available and no lack of clay on my back ten. My original intent was strawbale; I may return to that.

I'm fine sleeping in the pump-house, but my sweetheart will NEVER spend the night on the farm, unless there's a "house". Geez, there's a composter in the pump-house. Women!

[flowerweaver]

Now, now, not ALL women are like that. I have backpacked and kayaked my way across many a wilderness without amenities, much of it solo. I have built all kinds of things and dig in the dirt without gloves. But I clean up well, and feel just at home in an evening gown.

[steev]

Having thought long and hard about your post, I must admit that I have never felt at home in an evening gown, not that there's anything wrong with that, J. Edgar Hoover!

[12540dumont]

I dunno Steev, you'd be prettier in an evening gown than many that I have met.

www.cobcottage.com/workshops list of workshops in cob/strawbale....etc.

Leo likes rammed earth buildings. I like concrete. Something about the whole.... it doesn't burn appeals to me. I'd love to get one of those inflatable concrete cloth shelters, spray it with gunnite inside, and cover it with soil, put in some solar roof dots and make a new barn! Alas, the boss says no. I love things that can go up in 24 hours!

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Jan 22, 2015 16:27:11 GMT -5 12540dumont said:

I dunno Steev, you'd be prettier in an evening gown than many that I have met.

I've been wearing denim skirts for a few years now. The comfort is amazing... I don't know how American men ever let themselves get conned into wearing pants routinely. Sure pants offer great protection when working with shrubbery or thistles, but the comfort of a skirt can't be beat when lounging around with friends or going out on the town.

[steev]

I'm sure my Scots forebears found the North wind whistling up their kilts utterly invigorating.

I didn't mean to imply that I wouldn't be attractive in an evening gown, only that I wouldn't be comfortable, though fetching, no doubt.

[flowerweaver]

I once read the biography of pianist-composer Percy Grainger who refused transportation and walked between concert gigs wearing dresses he fashioned from tea towels. It never really said, but imagine he must have performed in concert attire.

It does make me happy I can make yarn from my sheep, thread from my cotton, and twine from my yucca. But I would not want to make an evening dress from them.