The First Consultation

     Yesterday was a good day.  Christina Ott, Cob-Builder/Consultant, made a trip our way yesterday.  She is a wealth of cob knowledge!  She studied natural building, conducts workshops, and recently was a presenter at a national "green" convention.  She amazed me with the way she easily answered all our questions and could readily talk numbers with our local building inspector.  This lady knows her stuff!  (Check her out at www.barefootbuilder.com.)
     I stumbled across Christina while casually searching cob on the internet.  (It seems like I have done a lot of stumbling lately- but with a wonderful outcome!)  To my disbelief, there was a live person, in Tennessee, that is an instructor on this topic!  We signed up for a weekend workshop and ended up coming for a kind of one-day independent study.  (Piece of phone conversation with Christina:  Me, "Do you live in a cob house?"  Christina, "Yes, I'm sitting in it now."  Me, huge smile.)  We plan to have her involved as our project moves through phases.  The first phase being the foundation, which is what we mostly discussed during this visit. 
     Cob, for those of you who aren't familiar with the term (I wasn't!), is a mixture of clay, sand, and straw.  It is similar to adobe (yes, I know, adobe is typically seen in dry climates and we aren't. The key is a good "hat and boots"- large roof overhang and a foundation with an excellent drainage system.)  Definitely nothing new in the world of building.   In Europe, beautiful cob home are still lived in today that are 500+ years old.  Cob is a very efficient material, cool in the summer and warm in the winter.  It's also very green and not to mention beautiful.  The curves.  The custom built-ins.  The little nooks and crannies.  (Pinterest has a lot of cool cob pics.)  It's just not common around here.  (Am I am no expert, thankfully there is a lot of information readily avaible online and some very resourceful books.)  
     We discussed our house plans, with only a few minor, minor tweaks.  The lot is almost ideal, coverage all around except for the south- perfect for passive solar.  The site has a little slope, but nothing some minor leveling won't fix.  Ready.
     We plan to begin the foundation next month.  This will consist of leveling the home site and digging a trench for the foundation, and then the building of it.  The trench will line our home and will be approximately three feet deep and 24' wide.  A perforated drain pipe will go in the bottom, followed by two feet of gravel.  Then a one foot concrete footer (to meet building code) will be poured up to grade.  Then lots of rock.  The rock foundation will be about 22" wide and 16+ inches tall.  Christina estimated needing about one and 1/2 dump truck loads of rock to meet our need.  (Many cob homes are small, only a couple of hundred square feet.  Our land restricts a home less than 1200 square feet, so we are building slightly over- but trying to keep it as small as possible.)  
     It sounds daunting when all of the steps are broken down.  Our goal is to build our foundation through the fall and winter, and begin the cobbing in the spring.  Lord, please send the rock our way.  I know He will provide!  Hopefully, my next post will include a groundbreaking! 
     Until then...   
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