Cob (building)

Cob is a building material. It consists of a mixture of clay, sand and straw.

Cob-building is a traditional technique that has been used for thousands of years and in all kind of climates (cob house can be found in Africa as well as in Wales). However it is most strongly associated with Devon, where many cob cottages have survived and are still lived in. The walls of a cob house are necessarily thick, and windows are correspondingly deepset, giving the houses a characteristic internal appearance. , but unlike adobe, cob is never cast into brick form, and unlike adobe it is constituted so as to be suitable for a wet climate.

Cob has recently been rediscovered as a low-cost and artistic building technique, and cob houses are now being built again.

See also

  • Sod
  • Straw-bale construction

References

  • The Hand-Sculpted House: A Philosophical and Practical Guide to Building a Cob Cottage (The Real Goods Solar Living Book) by Ianto Evans, Michael G. Smith, Linda Smiley, Deanne Bednar (Illustrator), Chelsea Green Publishing Company; (June 2002), ISBN 1890132349.

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