Baked Adobe Dome

Cob Home

Our Home in Oaxaca

Above:  This will be our future home.  The walls will be Cob or also called a "pile of mud".  This pile of mud is an engineered mix of very strong straw, sand and local clay/dirt.  The clay content is around 25% of wall volume.  The rock wall is made from local rocks on the land and also "urbanite", which is recycled concrete.

May 21, 2010
Week 9 into Cobbing

the tire work, groundwork, foundation, urbanite and local rock stem wall, all took place over the last two years or so.

Cob home in San Pablo Etla. I designed and built.

Cob home in San Pablo Etla

Cob home in San Pablo Etla

Cob home in San Pablo Etla

Cob home in San Pablo Etla

Tadelakt

Below are two photos of yesterdays work.  This finish is called

"Tadelakt" its an ancient Morrocan finish consisting of Lime and Marble.

Polished with river stones and hard steel.  With a natural blue pigment

shallot sprouts!

one week later after putting this yummy morsel in the dirt

cob house updates

below: Main room is painted with an "alis" made from imported white clay, local mica, whole milk powder, wheat paste and water. you can see the stairs leading up to the sleeping loft. the stairs are walnut, a neighbor cut her tree down and was using it for firewood, so i bought a few pieces from here.


below: view into bathroom, door to come


below: Bathroom. paint is called an "alis". made from locally harvested pink clay, ground mica that is from our valley, wheat paste and water

Month of May, various photos

below, ariel view from neighbors land


below: above brick house will be more house, we are building now


below: subsurface infiltrator of our laundry water, opened for inspection
working great after one year and perfectly clean, this means that the
avocado tree roots are eating all the linty junk!


below: new planting, the black circles are shallots. the round red
brick has ginger root planted it in. far right is a spaghetti squash


13 levels high now. it will be covered to be the garage.