I'm becoming obsessed with how cool this is. You can do research, but basically, cob building is clay, sand, and straw with sealant, and you can make it look real nice. If you watch the video, the guy some some pretty amazing things with cob. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/6MkjhYnknaU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
It looks and sounds interesting but I'm not sure how it would hold up in wetter climates. Up here in WA it would turn to mush in no time during 3/4 of the year.
The trick to making these type of structures work in Wet Climates, is to seal the walls, both inside and out so the moisture can't get into the interior. Many folks use a two Part Epoxy coating, to do this. It does increase the expense, but does work. ..... YMMV....
in the old days they made what was called "sand plaster" its a mix of calcium carbonate, sand, sawdust, water and sometimes salt this used to be the only true air and moisture proof coating if your tear out the walls in an old plaster n lathe house you will see sand plaster was used as a base coat before regular plaster sometimes it was used alone cisterns were sealed with it, walls, some well shafts part way down and rammed earth buildings like cob ive even heard of people making shingles out of it
Must be nice, I don't see a single rock or stone in any of his dirt. Certainly not in PA, because we wouldn't be able to get away with that here; we would have to have the clay brought in. If you dig in your backyard, all you will get is rocks. The field my father tills has to have been used in one form or another for almost 100 years, but we still pull up 8-12" goonies every time we plow.
There are a lot of cob buildings up on the Canadian coastline, so I assume it will work in WA. We can find info on that. Yes, even in CA we need to seal the cob. Rain is rain.
Cool stuff. There is a group selling books / videos on how to build "earthship" homes out of rammed earth tires that finishes the interior walls with this same material.
ive looked at most of those earthship "how-to's" i tried building a barn that way, very time consuming the individual tires are like solid concrete once packed and they have ungodly thermal mass just left unsealed but... next time i do this i will use galvanized zip screws and screw each tire to the finished ones it touches id say like 8 to 12 screws in each tire
Earthships are amazing, but they require a lot more time and effort. They also require non native materials, though coming upon tires wouldn't be a problem now or in a shtf scenario. It requires a lot of effort to pack the dirt into the tire.
you forget the original living earth structure the soddy house just cut sod into blocks, stack it like bricks lay stout poles across the top, cover with brush then lots of long grass cover the whole thing with more sod it may not be totally waterproof but its warm safe and fairly dry and you can build one in a day or 2 depending on how many hands you have
