Cob House Roof Construction

Learn about the pros and cons of each material in this excerpt taken from roofs.

Cob house roof construction.

A cob home has a lot of benefits the one down side is that it s very labor intensive and takes a good while. Set the foundation for your cob house. Cob cobb or clom in wales is a natural building material made from subsoil water fibrous organic material typically straw and sometimes lime. Learn how to build a cob house with my 10 hour cob building video course.

Since i already wrote about cutting sod for my roof i will describe how the sod was loaded. Cob building lends itself to incorporating salvaged and eclectic building materials. This hobbit house in wales was built in four months and cost about 4 600 in building materials. Doing the edge was the trickiest part since i had the fold the epdm underneath itself and leave a little bit exposed to protect the edge logs.

You would place a bond beam at the top of the cob wall ideally concrete and rebar or alternatively airplane cable connecting all the members of the roof in one big circle they way the roof is designed is to act in compression while exerting force on the bond beam which will act in tension. Low cost of building. Once the perimeter of the roof was covered with sod we covered the rest of the roof. The contents of subsoil naturally vary and if it does not contain the right mixture it can be modified with sand or clay.

Since the material used for cob house construction is locally sourced it is a dirt cheap method of building a dwelling which will last for years. Building a cob house. Let s have a look at some of the highlighting advantages of building a cob house. For a first time builder a yurt style roof like cyric30 suggested would probably be easiest.

Cob house construction is an ancient building technique using lumps of earth mixed with sand straw and water. From sod to straw wool to wood there are a variety of roof insulation options for cob houses. Unlike traditional houses which can got up very quickly cob is a slow process so be prepared. Cob building is easy to learn requires no special equipment and uses sustainable materials.

Cob structures can be used as homes chicken coops barns and even smaller ones for ovens. Just 24 cm thick the sleek cob walls are gracefully adorned by tall windows at intervals just wide enough so that the cob can take in many perforations. Cob is fireproof resistant to seismic activity and uses low cost materials although it is very labour intensive. Cob as a building material is very easy to find which makes it a practical option.

What is cob house construction.