Building a cob home

[Marianne]

It's coming along! What's the square footage again?

 

[rathbone]

Lovely!

 

[soulmatenlove]

Sq ft is 8X10 = 80
We had to pay the minimum for the square footage which is $50.
The gable ends are going in this weekend. Our east gable is going to have a dutch door with a very small deck to look over the field. And the west window was orginally going to have a rainbow pattern of glass bottles, but we have changed our mind, since we purchased a small arched window for $5 at the local hardware store.
More pictures to come next week! So excited!

 

[Britesea]

8 x 10- is that the footprint of the building? Usually, when square footage is calculated you would count the loft in too. I would love to see a floor plan! (I have a degree in Interior Design- I can't help it)

 

[Beekissed]

I was wondering how thick your walls are? I can't really tell from the pics.

 

[soulmatenlove]

I was wondering how thick your walls are? I can't really tell from the pics.

The walls are 1' thick. We would have liked to go thicker, but being our first time dry stacking stone 1' is what we ended up with. Next time, if we decide to dry stack again, we will build a wider stone wall.

 

[soulmatenlove]

8 x 10- is that the footprint of the building? Usually, when square footage is calculated you would count the loft in too. I would love to see a floor plan! (I have a degree in Interior Design- I can't help it)

Nice catch Britesea. And no, the 8x10 is the usable space. The footprint is 10x12. I didn't include the loft space because technically it's not usable space. At least as far as the building department is concerned. For them, there isn't enough headroom to be labled as a usable space. So it's more like an attic space. But if I were to include the loft into our square footage, we have 128 sq.ft. The loft is divided into two section. Roughly, a 2x8 loft on one side, and a 4x8 loft on the other. The center is open to the vaulted ceiling. We contemplating if a skylight should be placed there or just plain clear corrigated roofing material....we leaning towards a skylight.

We have an inspection lined up for Wednesday, it's for our structual framing. I am curious as to what they think of a cob wall being load bearing.

 

[Beekissed]

I can't tell by the pics but it looks as if your walls are the same thickness all the way from top to bottom. Don't think I've ever seen a cob structure that didn't taper a little from bottom towards the top...is this design load bearing?

 

[moxies_chickennuggets]

some pics I found.... I want to do this!

http://www.sufficientself.com/forum/uploads/3802_earth-art1.jpg http://www.sufficientself.com/forum/uploads/3802_earth-art4.jpg http://www.sufficientself.com/forum/uploads/3802_hobbit_house.jpg

Do you have the link to this house to post? DH and I were looking at them when we were looking to build...seeing what options were out there. But I don't remember seeing those pictures.

 

[Britesea]

these pics are not necessarily all the same house. The pic of the outside of the house was sent to me via an email-- it's a house located in Wales somewhere

The other two pics I found on Mother Earth News in an article about cob houses.

Although I'm not ready to take my old house down and rebuild it, I have been thinking about mudding the walls inside to give it more of that organic look that cob houses have. I loved the tree bas-relief but it would require having bare wall to showcase it; my walls throughout the house are full of shelves of books, pictures, and other things like that.