How To Make A Cob House Roof

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

How to make a cob house roof.

I am planning to build a cob cottage using a post and beam construction to hold up the roof as i am in a seismic area. Register for our 2018 cob workshops here. Building a living sod roof for a cob house. Cob structures can be used as homes chicken coops barns and even smaller ones for ovens.

At long last i have a living roof. The 4 thick cob wall. I love the feeling of the cob squishing between your toes so much fun. For a much fuller discussion of foundations and drainage issues as they relate to cob see my book with ianto evans and linda smiley the hand sculpted house q.

His perseverance and meticulous calculations made it possible for devan mash to design a 4 thick cob wall. Cob building is easy to learn requires no special equipment and uses sustainable materials. They way the roof is designed is to act in compression while exerting force on the bond beam which will act in tension. Learn all the skills.

I am no expert but the guy in england kevin mccabe that builds huge cob houses uses a dead man and a wooden rim and then attaches wood to wood for the roof and then covers the joints in with cob fills the cob up to the roof beams. The cob wall has small openings in the top and the bottom of the wall to facilitate good ventilation for keeping the house cool. I ve been anticipating this day for over a year now and it s finally done. On monday a group of about twelve folks assembled to help me lift sod onto the top of my roof and in two and a half hours it was effectively covered.

Cob house construction is an ancient building technique using lumps of earth mixed with sand straw and water. About a third of the world s population lives. By ziggy may 14 2009 10 comments. To mix these together the favorite method is with your bare feet.

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.