Muzhik McCoy

Kathleen Sanderson wrote:Make test 'snakes' and balls and see if they crack when they dry.  If they do, then you'll need to get some sand (sharp builder's sand) to add to the clay.  I forget the actual percentages (and don't have time to look it up -- I have Ianto Evans' book on cob houses), but the ideal mix seems to usually have more sand than clay in it.  The clay holds things together, the sand prevents cracking.  For a cob house you'd also add chopped straw, but I'm not sure how much straw you'll want in a cob oven.  Maybe some in the outer layer.

Here's an alternative to straw. On another site, I read a suggestion of use natural rope (they were making a cob pizza oven, 3ft wide at the base, so the recommended length was 3 feet); cut the rope into 1-inch lengths, then separate the strands and individual fibers of the rope before mixing it in to the cob. You'll have to do some back-of-the-envelope calculations to figure out how much extra rope you'll need. YRMV (Your Rope May Vary)

In your earthbag dome, what do you use for the floor?  In a  monolithic dome, the floor is concrete and is tied, via rebar, into the shell to form a completely concrete dome.

I wouldn't use galvanized steel.  It's possible to get this puppy hot enough to vaporize the zinc.

And if you build this too close to the kitchen utensils and they are also galvanized, then you'd have everything including the kitchen zinc.

Dr. Temp, as far as the printer drivers go, HP has tried implementing a common driver for all its business printers.  The problem is when you have multi-function printers, i.e., the driver not only has to drive the printer portion, but run the scanner portion and maybe the fax portion, and maybe do this over a network (like a home network.)

It all looks good, but it looks like the system is only available in Africa.  I'd like to at least get the foot-powered generator!

Jim Argeropoulos wrote:
The local coast guard station does it to protect their dock in the winter. Water near the pump doesn't freeze over and I expect it's pretty thin up near the open area.
I'm not sure if they use water or air. I can't tell from shore, but it doesn't look like air.

I'm pretty sure it's water.  If they were bubbling air that would oxygenate the water and make it more likely for fish to congregate there, which might bring their own problems.  So long as the top of the water stays "roiled", ice won't form there until it gets really cold.

You're still going to have to make it out of firebrick, as that design will probably still get very, very hot.  Normal brick will crack.

On a survivalist thread, I saw a reference to "Super Soil".  There's an e-book called "Garden Gold" that tells how to make it.  Not wanting to spend $12 at this time, I did some research online.  The only stuff I could find there to "super soil" was on a number of sites devoted to growing marijuana.

So my question is if the "super soil" on the weed growing sites would be a good starter for a garden, perhaps as the soil cover for a hugelkulture bed?

When I hear about "houses needing to breath", I remember to something that I heard over and over again in my Home Energy Rating System (HERS) training: Houses don't need to breath, people do.  The biggest offenders are houses with crawl spaces.  Until recently, crawl spaces were built with vents to "allow the house to breath."  Research in the last few years have shown that houses with vented crawlspaces have significantly higher levels of mold, rot, and internal air quality problems.  Houses built with sealed crawlspaces experienced none of these problems.

While I like the idea of using the small fan to continually promote air changes, I'd have to wonder if you're getting sufficient fresh air without having a system designed to bring in fresh air.  The only way you're going to know is if you pay an HERS rater to do a fan door test on your house.

03USMCWA_RAR wrote:
I've tried to post pictures but I'm not having any success... HELP ME PLEASE

When you post a reply, at the bottom left of the message box there's a line that says, Additional Options...  Click on that, and you'll get some new options that include ways to attach files.  Click on the "Browse" button to browse to the location of the picture files, select the file, and click "Open".

I've attached a picture to this message using these steps.  Happy posting!