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Cob House
helped a little bit with the build too.
The winter of 2009 was pretty grim, the caravan was on its last legs.
Colin and Féile thought they may be ready to move in for the arrival of baby
number two , due in the summer of 2010. But almost-single-handedlybuilt-houses have a habit of taking longer that you’d expect so baby number
two and the caravan was not only bursting at the seams but it was literally
disintergrating.
As Autumn 2010 set in, Colin and Féile and the two children and the two
dogs waited for their mud floor to dry. They waited and they waited and they
waited. At last, they could wait no more. So with a slightly sticky sensation
underfoot, they left the caravan and, joy of joys, moved into their new home.
The floor around the dining table is pocked with chair-leg dents, the price
of moving in before the floor was fully hard. Colin says it adds character.
They tried to give away the caravan, for free. Nobody wanted it. Colin
stripped it of all its re-usable and recyclable components. In the spring of
2011, with his son on his knee, Colin broke up what remained of the caravan
with a very large digger after living in it for six and a half years.
during the day to keep the interior cool and radiate the energy back at night
to keep the interior warm. In this way cob acts as a temperature regulator.
A cob house needs very little additional heating in winter.
The word Cob comes from an Old English root meaning ‘a lump or rounded
mass.’ It’s a traditional building technique using hand formed lumps of
earth mixed with sand and straw which is easy to learn and inexpensive to
build. When the cob hardens it is similar to lean concrete and it is used like
adobe to create self supporting, load bearing walls. It has been used for
centuries throughout Western Europe as far North as the latitude of Alaska,
even in rainy and windy climates.
Cob Construction
Cob allows itself to be shaped and moulded while you build, allowing
shelves, alcoves and even furniture to be built right into the walls. Cob being
earth, is totally fireproof, so even a fireplace can be built into the design.
Regular working windows and doors are embedded in the cob along with
their lentils while you build the layers up. If you want a fixed window you can
use any kind of glass embedded directly into the cob. This allows for using
broken windows (you cob over the broken part) or creative things such as
glass bottles or a car windshield.
As cob walls are between 1 and 2 feet thick they are nice and warm. The
cob has a high thermal mass which allows it to absorb the sun’s energy
“From an environmentally-friendly point
of view, it does not get much better.”
Home & Build Winter 2016
Winter 2016.indd 60
08/01/2016 4:31 p.m.