I am so glad I found this forum. I live in Alabama, and recently purchased several acres of vacant land. After a few weekend excursions, we have determined we have around 5 springs bubbling up out of the ground and running to a large creek. The clay ground is in abundance here. So are the giant sandrocks, and what we call sage grass (that can be used as straw in building) I hope at least. our goal is to build a round cob house, completely off grid.
We decided to start small with a cob oven. So our base is build up with fieldstone. Today, We added our first cob layer. Then a lip with bottles enclosed in it. We learned alot but I am still concerned about the structure and drying time. We covered it with a tarp tonight, and will continue finishing the base layer of the oven next week with the firebricks, sandcastle, and cob covering.
I guess my question is does it look right?we didnt completely finish covering the bottles because we ran out of the cob we had mixed up and time had run out for us to make more before we had to head home. Any thoughts or opinons are welcome. Are we going about this the right way so far? I know cob is very forgiving, so if we blew it we can just try again next weekend i guess.
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