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Building with Cob

Steve Spence — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 19:02:00 +0000

Cob is an ancient and simple building material. Made of soil, sand, straw and water, it can last for decades, sometimes centuries, and is an inexpensive, local, green building material.

The Cob Builders Handbook says,

“The three most common forms of earth buildings are adobe, rammed earth and cob. In the southwestern United States, the five hundred year old Taos Pueblo, as well as many homes and churches, are made of adobe. Adobe is a form of building using unfired earth. Dirt, straw and water – the same ingredients as in cob – are made into bricks which are then sun dried and built into walls with a “cob-like” mortar. Some very old Native American structures like the Casa Grande ruin in Arizona are made out of cob. These are described locally as being built of “puddled or coursed adobe”.”

This spring, Green-Trust will be building a generator and wood boiler shed with cob, in preparation for building a few homes as well.

Resources:

http://beckybee.net/
http://weblife.org/cob/index.html
http://www.housealive.org/
http://www.greenhomebuilding.com/cob.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cob_%28material%29
http://www.cobcottage.com/

New Environmentally Focused Videos

Steve Spence — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 01:18:01 +0000

We have a new feature on our website. A series of environmentally focused videos can be found on the lower right side of this post and other articles on this website. Also check out the discussion topics to the right of this post. Hope you enjoy.

Offset your Automobile, Home, & Flight Emissions

Steve Spence — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 12:29:00 +0000

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When you buy a TerraPass, your money funds renewable energy projects such as wind farms. These projects result in verified reductions in greenhouse gas pollution. And these reductions counterbalance your own emissions.

A new kind of environmental movement
Of course, global warming is too big a problem for a handful of people to solve on their own. It’s a global problem that requires action on a global scale.

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