EEP!

Considering today is the 25th it looks as though I may only barely get the walls finished before it snows. I will be updating with pictures tomorrow night hopefully with where I am.

Besides the fact that it's downpouring outside, I have come up with a technique where I can have three workers make enough cob to go up about 12 inches in one lift. The issue is having workers and myself being around to get it done. Too many unexpected events have really undermined my ability to get this done in a timely manner. I hope I'll have a chance to come by on the weekends during school and get work done.

A quick update

I had taken this photo over a week ago. At the moment I have two anchors of wood in the door and more cob, but I'll have to update later with my setup and how far I've gotten. Expect an update within a week of the progress and how far I expect to get before the summer is up.

Cob actually has gone up, but due to a family emergency and issues primarily out of my control, I probably will not finish. I am considering scrapping the project at this time as in the next year I may not have a chance to complete this. Not sure right now. It's a huge let down to see this go to waste.

Finishing the Foundation

Unfortunately the foundation (as you guys I'm sure recall) is what took me the longest and stopped me from getting to cobbing last year. I had never done any stone masonry before, and I will never attempt any more until I take a proper course in stone laying. It not only was a lot of labor, it was a task that is a bit beyond my skill level. It's not something you can just learn by a book. At the time of making this, I really didn't have the option of taking a class or having a mason work with me (no money) so I have thus winged it. I will explain after the photos why I have left it at the height it's at, the size, and what I think of it right now. I will then explain the next process.


These first photos are of where the foundation was, and all the stone Belle (fellow architecture bud) and I gathered at a local farm in my area (thank you Mr. McCaffrey!) Spring Rain Farm offers my family a lot of strawberries, too, and if you haven't ever been in the summer you should definitely go pick your own. The final stones were put in place by myself, my father, and Emily (a friend from massart.)



Height of wall (average because I suck!): 12"
Door opening: inside= 2'-5" outside 3'-0"
Wall thickness: 1'-0" to 1'4" because it get's skinny in a few areas (but my minimum was 12")
Depth under grade: 1' or so of stone, another two feet of gravel, compact

I have amazing drainage in my yard, and considering the fact that this is just a shed and not a building that will be used year round, I opted to cut down my initial design. I shortened the wall, I thinned the wall. I did not go to the frost line and my masonry is at least.. not going to move. The top is 'rough' so that cob will adhere to the top and won't slide as much. I am going to hope for the best and see how the rain affects the area in the next few days.

The cob will be at the base between 6-8" thick. This will be enough to support a roof and support some detailing inside (such as some built in shelves, can handle the weight of me putting in pegs to hold tools, a window with a wooden lintel, bottles placed into the cob to allow light and color. It will seem dark when we finish but when I apply a white plaster I believe it will change everything about how it feels and how much light is within the cob. Hopefully I will be complete enough this summer to plaster it next summer.

My current plan is to make phone calls and get clay/stray tomorrow, or enough to start doing test bricks. I will need to build a platform to hold and keep dry the straw, and rearrange my workspace for cobbing, not stone work. I need to get those silly weeds off of my dirt pile as well. I will also make a list of tools I need tonight so that tomorrow I can get those tools, or prepare to make anything sort of strange out of wood at massart. I am not sure where I'm going to get a door at the moment, but I may just build one myself from recycled lumber. Not sure yet. I know a few local carpenters and they may assist me with this if I throw some money at them.

The door needs to eventually have a wooden jamb made, a lintel, and I will use the left-over concrete to make a threshold. The floor will remain dirt. I have a window that was donated to me, so I will nestle it directly into the cob.

I do have a good back ache and can finally feel the actual shed coming together.

We'll start with the oven!

A while ago (now) I finally got around to firing my oven. This required only a small amount of fire wood that I had sawn down into manageable chunks, though I will recommend even smaller firewood bits and strips to get the fire started if you have a tiny oven such as mine. I will also go ahead and say that it took a bit for the oven to be fully fired and dry to hold a strong temperature. You really need to fire that baby for a few hours! Onto the photos and the times it took to cook the two pizzas and muffins.

The pizzas were the first experiments, and at first I had not waited long enough for the oven temperature to level out (because it hadn't fired enough.) It took a bit of fiddling to get the pizza's to cook but after trying leaving a fire going inside and letting it fire longer, we had success.



In the end we found that, once at temperature (500-400 degrees Fahrenheit) the oven can cook an east side cheese/topping pizza in 15 minutes. Our corn muffins cooked in 20 minutes which is the time it takes in a conventional oven. Everything had a wonderful crust and very light smoke taste to it and a lot of moisture. We look forward to the fire dept allowing us to cook the oven again and a more successful firing(at least faster!)



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The pizza was donated to us by East Side Pizza from East Taunton, MA. If you are ever in the area, give them a call - (508) 821-5969 . They are like family to us. My mother and brother aided in bringing food, set up, and of course eating. Thank you Paul and massart for allowing me to be a bit crazy in your courtyard. Next up - updates on my foundation with measurements and plans for the cobbing!

Now I just need a door :)

While digging out the door, I was worried I was going to dig through the sand and into my cob. The first layer of cob I used was just dirt and clay, no sawdust. It was already fairly sandy when I was digging through that layer, hence the concern. However, the newspaper I put on top of the sand really did help. In fact, as soon as I got a good amount of sand out, the rest caved in cleanly. Now I'm waiting for it to dry (we have hot days coming, yay!) a little bit more and I need to make a door for it. I should also chop up lumber that will fit in there, as all my logs are currently too big.

The way I made the cob:
I had bags of reclaimed clay from the ceramics department. I would fill them with water and wait a day as most of it would turn to slip. I'd pour this into a wheelbarrow and add more water. I'd add dirt until I got the desired consistency of being just a bit too wet, and then I'd add sawdust. This got rid of moisture and provides air pockets in the cob which is important for insulation. I did this by eye from the first ball tests I made, and I really wanted a little less than half clay to half soil. There wasn't too much clay already in the soil, but it was wonderfully sandy. At home I'll be applying the same technique by watering down the boston blue clay I have overnight and then adding soil. I could buy bags, but the reclaimed soil/clay is fun to work with. Dry bags would be a pain anyway because I'd have a lot of floating silica dust if I spilled one for instance. For the outer part of the oven because I've been running out of time I applied a layer of clay slip to protect it from rain a bit. This oven is so temporary I didn't want to go through the trouble of making plaster yet. I'm going to be keeping it under a tarp while I'm using it anyway.

So some time in the next week I'm going to fire this baby and hopefully use a thermal imaging camera to watch and monitor the heat within the oven. I'll obviously post all of that wonderful data here!

Cob Oven and Plans

So I'm actually waiting for a layer of cob to dry a little so I can add the thick layer of insulation, which is really the final layer of my oven. I've been slowly getting this done so today is the day. After it dried for a few days I'll cut the opening and fashion a simple door, etc etc.

I'll update photos later, as usual, and I suppose I should document the type of mixtures of cob I've used. It's really not as complicated as it may sound.