Posted by Michael Blaha, March 24th , 2006.
Coenraad Rogmans of House Alive! produced “COB! — The DVD, A Lively Pictorial of Cob Construction”
“With more than 250 pictures, spread out over five chapters, this 22-minute DVD will illustrate to you the beauty and simplicity of building with cob.”
An inspiring slideshow of natural building activity and the joy that seems to be present while playing in the mud. Wonderful examples of cob buildings and the people that make them. I think it’s a great introduction to cob – the material, cob construction and the magical spaces that can be made with clay, sand and straw!
I purchased the DVD and found it fun to watch. This isn’t a how to film; it’s more of a pictorial or slideshow. I was hoping for a little more narration or video of people creating cob structures… maybe the next one?
I have also enjoyed reading the My House Alive! Online Magazine, a collection of Coenraad’s articles.
Posted by Michael Blaha, March 19th , 2006.
This gas powered Jonsered chain saw has seen a lot of action. Recently my brother took this thing to a quarter acre of (unhealthy) woods to make space for a vineyard.
I would like to purchase one of these in the future, though I can’t decide if I should get an electric or gas powered chain saw. I imagine the electric chain-saws are much nicer to work with, though you’d have to have electricity on site. I see a lot of cheapo chain-saws at the home centers. They are tempting, but I want it to be a high quality brand. An investment for the long term. If you’ve had a really good experience with a brand let me know.
Posted by Michael Blaha, March 18th , 2006.
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I’ve decided to change my RSS Feed over to Feedburner.
The old RSS feed will indeed still work.
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Posted by Michael Blaha, March 13th , 2006.
I was playing around with some vermiculite and clay for an insulating layer of the rocket stove. It was squishy and lightweight. I wondered about the possibilities of this material in a traditional cob wall… Could this added R value to a otherwise not insulative material ?
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Posted by Michael Blaha, March 8th , 2006.
View photos here »
I experimented with the plans that Ianto Evans and Leslie Jackson prescribed in the first draft of ‘Rocket Stoves to Heat Cob Buildings: How to Build a Super Efficient Wood Fired Heater‘. I gotta tell you that it didn’t sink in the first time I read it. I understood it in principle, but it just seemed counter intuitive. The smoke goes down instead of up? Every time I’ve seen fire and smoke it goes up.
The rocket stove is a efficient wood burning device. All the heat is stored in the thermal mass; cob bench, soil bed, wall or floor. By the time the smoke leaves the building it has lost a significant amount of heat and transfered it into the building. So much that you can keep your hand on the chimney top. It’s mostly hot air and moisture leaving the flue.
The rocket stove is a down-draft heater. The oxygen hungry fire sucks air into the mouth of the stove. The fire and air move down the horizontal burn tunnel, in this case made of fire brick, and up into a insulated internal chimney. The insulated chimney was constructed with a clay tube embedded in vermiculite and clay, embedded in a metal cylinder. Then the hot air and smoke moves into a 55 gallon drum, cools ever so slightly, releasing heat into the building and sinks / is pushed into the 8″ horizontal stove pipe. The pipe is embedded in a cob bench, releasing the heat into the thermal mass of the bench there by storing it like a battery. From the bench the pipe leaves out of the building.
Updates:
Here is a of Ianto’s Rocket Stove book.
Read a review by Ocean Liff-Anderson at Dirt Cheap Builder.
The second edition, Rocket Mass Heaters-Superefficient Woodstoves You Can Build (and snuggle up to) is available here:
http://www.rocketstoves.com/
