hello everybody
i am in the process of building our cob home in oaxaca mexico. we live in heavily seismic zone, just this year, our region made headlines across the world for the heavy earth quake we had.
i am building a two story house, bottom floor cob, top floor wood. the second floor will be sustained mostly by posts and beams.
we are building the cob walls ontop of a rubble trench, reinforced cement slab and 1 foot above ground rock/cement stem wall. it will be 40cm wide.
here is my question:
would it make sense to plant smallish posts connecting the stemwall to the wooden ring beam ontop of the cob wall to make the house more seismically secure?
the idea behind this would be to help the cob wall move in the same way as the posts and the second floor in case of an earth quake. the counter argument, as i see it, would be that exactly the same logic could make the cob wall break open where these small posts are when the earthquake comes.
greeting, haux
