posted 12 years ago
Hello,
an Idea just popped into my head and there seems to be nothing in cyberspace that resembles it. I am stewing over building designs in my head constantly; building designs in my part of Canada need to withstand everything from -50C in the winter to incredibly hot, dry summers, to incredibly wet and humid springs, to god knows what else with the year-by-year shift in climate I have witnessed even in my short life time. of all the building options that I wish to incorporate into building my future great grandchildren's house, I have been pondering wattle and daub the most these days. It seems to me that this method lends itself to inventing a scheme of layers to provide adequate insulation, which at -50C is a primary concern.
Here in the Forestry/Mining heart of Northern Ontario, there is an abundance of young regrowth dogwood, birch, willow, alder etc that makes wonderful wattle, plenty of timber frame material and a never-ending supply or high quality clays and sands. While straw, either from a farm or wild, is available, I am pondering the use of beaten bark from our eastern white cedars. I wish to utilize this species in construction to make use of it's resistance to rot and the left-over bark is a very strong, durable, insect and rot resistant fiber.
If it is chopped to lengths of maybe a foot, and then beaten to loose the fibers, I am thinking I could mix it with clay and sand in much higher proportions than one could with straw and make a light-weight, insulating layer of daub. Perhaps such a mixture would be best as a layer between the wattle and a heavier cob casing. In my mind, I see a double wattle wall encased in this cedar-bark daub, and capped with cob and plaster on the exterior. This would provide a core of dead airspace in the weave, surrounded by dense cedar-bark daub.
Any thoughts?
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