Mitch Holmes

Hey all,

I am entertaining the idea of doing a tiny house on wheels, and have read that the overall maximum width for the trailer is something like 8'6" without having a special wide load permit. My question is whether this maximum width includes roof overhang on the house itself? I have to assume it does, but just haven't found a clear answer. I'm pretty keen on large roof overhangs, at least on normal houses, and as I was drawing out some sketches for my tiny house, I originally had a 12+ inch overhang sketched out, but then realized the overall width of the house up top would be over 10 ft. Thoughts?

Thanks for the notice! Got in an order of some goodies last-minute

Chris Magwood wrote:I'd suggest that you make the walls in two stages, so that there is a box-beam wood plate between the first story walls and the second. This plate will allow you to precompress the first floor bales to make the whole thing very stable (and maybe even do the scratch coat of plaster), before moving on the second floor. Your floor joists can hang from this plate, which means they aren't going through the wall assembly and ruining your insulation value and making plastering really difficult.

Chris

Hey Chris, I like your idea of doing that separator between floor levels. What else would need to be done to precompress the first level of bales? Do you usually make the box beam as wide as the bales, and insulate inside the box? I am wanting to build a small two story cob house with bales on the north walls, and have been wondering how to go about it.

Jay C. White Cloud wrote:Hi Mitch,

I don't think you are being over looked, as much as folks may not know how to start to answer as some may not approve, or be out of their element. I will do my best...

I wasn't trying to force an answer out of anyone, but still I do appreciate your response.

I have just noticed that I haven't come across any straw bale/cob hybrid buildings that are more than one story without any form of internal structure. (which of course is almost an answer in and of itself) But even so, I was hoping to glean some information from people who have building experience with this hybrid sort of method. I am not discarding any other ideas, like using a timber frame structure, I am just trying to explore this one.

Balecob, anyone?

I am planning on building myself a little cob house this coming spring/summer up here in Fort Collins, CO (Zone 5b). I have a couple questions for anyone with expertise regarding building with balecob walls.

1) My home will be about 300 "sq ft", and am going to build a Rocket Mass Heater as my heat source. In my design, it sits on the north side of the circular room, the cob thermal mass bench contouring to the curve of the room. I recently kinda decided that it would be wise to build the north walls of the house with balecob. Where I live, we get around 300 sunny days per year(!), but the winters can get pretty cold. My question is whether or not it matters what kind of material the wall is made out of that the RMH sits on. If i have a balecob wall, is that a squandered opportunity to have more thermal mass in the wall itself, or is the thermal mass of the RMH pretty much all contained within the cob bench?

2) Can balecob walls be load bearing? The house will be two stories, so would a balecob wall be structurally insufficient for holding up the second story plus roof with winter snows? I guess a partner question to that would be how to fasten and secure floor joists and roof rafters into the balecob wall?

3) And if someone could point me to some good resources regarding building balecob walls that would be awesome. (like making the walls curved, how to cob over them/how much cob, how to join the two building materials).

Thanks so much!

Oh man, my apologies Andy, I did not realize the conference tickets were that expensive. have fun!

Hmmm.... this is the first time I have heard of that conference, but it sounds pretty cool. I DO live in Fort Collins....

So basically, I am interested Andy.

Yes I agree that raising the land would be a good option, I am just wondering if it is realistically feasible. But with your idea about building the stem walls higher, i would also have to raise up the interior floor level with lots and lots of drain rock of some sort, or else my earthen floor would also be ruined. Also wanting to know if that is feasible as well.

Hello all, hopefully i can explain this so that it makes sense. I will hopefully be building a cob house next spring, and will most likely have a tin roof with roundwood logs for the framing members (8 in. or so). The shape of the house will be circular, so I was wanting to make the roof circular as well to match the shape of the house, with a good overhang. I have been going over a couple ideas and would like to get some second opinions. The roof style will just be a simple sloped shed roof, not too steep of a pitch (something like the picture below). The span from wall to wall would be about 12 ft., plus overhang all around.


This shows just the basic slope of the roof.


With this option, the blue lines represent logs laid underneath the (black) logs for support that way


This would just be running the logs without extra support, then tying in perpendicular on opposing sides.

What do you think? Any other ways to do it?