The cob begins with St Peters visit

We are very excited about the long awaited cob walls being started on the cottage. It was a big push to get all the services in place to get ready for the the big day, made even bigger by the fact that 20 students from St Peters school were coming along to give us a helping hand.

Wwoofer Oyvind from Norway paints the reinforcing rods with zinc rich paint in readiness for the earth walls. The base of the wall has been waterproofed with a bituminous paint over a base of concrete.








The plumber prepared all the pipework. Note the red and white underfloor heating pipes.



















Jim the electrician preparing the holes for the electrical cable. The easiest way to run cabling through cob walls is using electrical ducting.













With the tradesmen sorting out the technical side of things, we had to get the most important ingredient ready, the mud!
Here wwoofer Caleb from Canada mends the wooden mixing pad in readiness. We have not used this pad since we finished making the mortar for the bricks, and a few repairs are necessary.








Once the correct amounts of clay and sand have been loaded on the mixing pad with the digger bucket, the rotary hoe is used to mix the clay and sand together. Caleb picks up the larger rocks turned up by the rotary hoe.










Next water is added to the mix, and it is mixed until it is a "good mud pie" consistency. The mix is then covered with a tarp and left for a minimum of 12hours to allow the clay platelets to migrate through the mix and bind it all together. .




Next day the happy students from St Peters were on hand to help with the next stage of the process - adding the straw and stomping it into the clay. The straw adds strength and insulating properties to the earth, and we stomp in as much as possible.





Once the mix is loaded with well coated straw, we asked the kids to form balls ready to place on the wall base. This method is a traditional way, and often a human chain is formed and the clay balls passed from one to another making the transportation from clay pit to wall easier.








Some of the students found a very comfortable bed in the straw and enjoyed the afternoon making cob balls.









Peter Fulton-Bevis and Ali discussing the pros and cons of laying the first cob balls.








In the afternoon we stopped for a cake break, just what is needed to recharge after a morning of stomping mud.







Then it was back to the wall, placing the cob balls and massaging them together into one wall of cob. The students stuck at it, and helped us get our wall under way.






Ali cooked us a damper for dinner, to go with the sausages and sauce. We had all worked hard and it was great to finish the day with some good food. Thank you St Peters for all your help.