Boots wrote:WOW Bats, That is just what I needed! Excellent motivation and am so impressed.
No problems!
Boots wrote:I love your walls. Did you go round embedding those bits, or is that the result of your mix? They look great, and the A frame addittion is soooo funky! The corner looks bricked.
That's just a result of the mix. You can find all sorts of bits and bobs as you walk around the house. Because we had cattle on the farm during the mixing phases, you can occasionally see darker patches of cob - cow dung! There's a couple of strands of bailing twine in their too - all for good measure!
The only bricks were for the foundations. The corner looks a little strange as it unfortunately suffered from a collapse over a winter. We think it was the result of a wet mix which got a bit wetter, and so didn't bind too well with the lower levels - hence causing a slippage plain - which then slipped!
3 tonnes of earth fell off the house - so, with a bit of reinforcement, 3 tonnes needed to be restacked!
Boots wrote:I haven't looked into cob much... that's the same as rammed earth, is it? Where you fill huge wall moulds and pack it down hard, is that it? Looks very good, whatever it is.
Rammed earth relies more on shuttering, very much like wall moulds as you described.
Tradional cob is more self standing - we literally put it on the ground walked on it to squeeze the air bubbles out (stopping expansion and contraction, but also stopping any gaps which could fill with water), then moved on to the next meter. Eventually you do a lap of the house, and start all over, building up in layers. All in all it took us two summers worth of work to build up the cob framework of the house.
Lots of blood, sweat and tears (take all three very literally - pitch fork through toes, working in 30 degree heat with no shade, and a couple of painful falls from height!).
Boots wrote:Berkshire... that is on some misty moors, yes?... (Gran told me tales when I was young about the escapees)
I'd love to say it's an idylic moorland picturesque scenario - unfortunately we're just on the edge of suburbia in Southern England. We border an ex-RAF/USAF airbase (which severly delayed our planning permissions!), and a main road. We have a T***o's superstore 500m away as the crow flies (and from where the liter blows), and a McDonald's a bit further away from that! But, to be honest, they don't bother us much, and I wouldn't swap it for the world!
Boots wrote:Are you having any probs with moisture, and did you seal yours? If so, can you throw in any suggestions?
Moisture issues aren't too bad. We have eves which stretch out by a metre to reduce the amount of rain running onto the walls. As such the only water that gets on to them is rain water rather than run off. We've noticed a little bit of erosion in some places - and a little bit of fracturing where rainwater has got in and then frozen - but this is very limited.
To be honest the biggest thing we're having issues with at the moment is insects and birds. The insects find the insultating properties of the earth particularly good at night - the birds have realised this and will happily chip away at the walls in search of bugs, grubs and other insects!!!
Eventually we wanted to put a lime render on the outside - but that's another summers work - and none of us are keen on working with lime after using it to plaster the internal walls - and all the associated "ARGH! it's in my eyes" and burns on the hands where the gloves have split!
I believe lime might still be on the cards - but cut with something else so we can retain the amazing colours of the walls - something we'd loose if we went with a straight lime render.
Just because it feels good, it doesn't make it right.
