Interior walls growing by leaps and bounds

It's been wonderful just doing cob all week, and seeing the bottom rooms taking shape.  The weather is mostly perfect, mid-60s F during the day, so the next morning the cob is moist and workable for mixing in the next layer, but still firm enough to keep on building on it.

Intersection of two walls.  The slowest drying part.  Wish I had started cob
at this point and worked outwards from it.

 Very happy with the mixture.  In this photo to the left, you can see we left a space between the wall and the higher floor next to it.  Then after the cob wall was up, we filled the gap with gravel for a moisture barrier.  However, I am less and less concerned about moisture coming up from under the house.  Friends of ours say there is a lady nearby that built a cob house and didn't put any gravel under the floors.  The traditional homes here also didn't have gravel under the floors . . .

 We quickly used up all the dirt dug up from leveling the floors, so we've had to go back to the mine for not just clay, but for building soil as well.  However, I bought a pick, and that has made it much easier than when we were digging soil for the storeroom with only shovels.  In 45 minutes we can dig enough for a couple days.  Today it was windy and going to be below freezing tonight, so instead of cobbing, we just got dirt ready.  So we are set for 3-4 days easily.

You can see that the wall on the right is almost up to the stem wall!!
It is just above my knee, and looking good!

First Cob on the Ystervark Manor!!

It has been an exciting week! Monday was a holiday, so Lerato and Notsi took the day off and Corné and I went up on the koppie (hill) looking for stone to finish the last 2 meters of the stem wall. Tuesday, we collected those and put them up, finally finishing the sandstone stem wall. Thought the job would take 2-3 weeks, and it took about 2 months! However, it's higher than we planned, which is nice. Made 3 test cob batches of soil, crusher dust (which is leftovers from making gravel, all of it smaller than 4mm) and clay. Didn't add clay when building the store room, but the cob is a bit crumbly. So we've taken to breaking up clay that was under the sub-soil we dug up for the store room. Using a small garden shovel, did a 10-3-2, 10-3-3, and a 10-4-4. The first didn't pass the pull apart test well. Both of the other two were better, and chose the later 10 soil, 4 crusher, and 4 clay.

The 10-4-4 is on the left, then 10-3-3, and the

10-3-2 is the cracked one on the right.  

 Yesterday, dropped the crusher down to 3, mostly because the guys can't help themselves when shoveling the stuff, and it's always more than what it's suppose to be. Also pushed up the clay to an almost 5. It's actually just over half a 5 gallon bucket. When we take the clay out of the ground, from a place somewhat affectionally know as "the mine", we put it in pits of black plastic so that we can soak it. 

 In the pits, I chop it with the shovel to mix and break it down, get the water through it, and it's ready to use in an hour or two but try to actually let it soak overnight. It has made a difference, the cob is much stickier and bonding better. At first didn't think we really needed to add it as there are many traditional homes here where they didn't add anything. Come to find out, those weren't really cob homes, but rammed earth. Similar, but the ramming must do something to make it stronger.

Wednesday we started mixing and laying the cob down! Starting at the lowest interior wall in the house. We'll keep building up, which will take us further and further up the building as we go along. Putting down lifts of +/-10cm/4in. Had a conundrum in what to do between the wall and the earth on the high side of the wall. The house is on a slope, and our bedroom, the lowest room, will be 2 steps below the living room above it. I'll add a video and photos to show how we are handling it.

Bedroom on right of wall, living room above it. Photo taken Wednesday.

Bedroom foreground, guest room above it.

Seeing the walls starting to come up is finally making the place seem like a home!! I told Pastor John, I wish I had more money so that I could hire more guys. If I could, I'd employ 8-10 men and have the house built in no time!! Just a note if you building yourself . . . for most of the stem wall, I had 3 volunteers from my church helping me. This week there were also 4 of us.   

I am still amazed when I think that the "mud" I can squish with my boots and that is totally malleable, will harden and be a wall for a long, long time!

After 6 months

The Plan

My wife, two children, and myself moved to South Africa November, 2012.  We bought 40 hectares of a farm, and planned to build our own cob house, live off the grid, have a large organic garden and animals, and then work on community development.  Corné is a nurse, and wanted to help with HIV and premature births, and hoped to get involved that way as well. 

What Happened

About a month and half after arriving, we meet Pastor John and Nsoaki, who had a vision nearly identical to ours.  They were building the church at the moment we met, with the next plan to be a soup kitchen, then to start a Christian school next year (January 2014), and also begin a "Granny Garden" project to help the grandparents raising grandkids.  My experience as a teacher naturally lead me to be a part of the school project, and Corné wanted to be involved in the soup kitchen.  Our plan was quickly turned on its head, as we were brought into the church and the opportunities for ministry were right there in front of us!!

Cob Building

Another dream of ours was to build our own cob home.  We attended a workshop in Tennessee, in summer 2011 that gave us a hands-on experience of cobbing.  Here in South Africa, homes have been made from earth for centuries, and we had even seen earthen homes, so we knew it could be done.  The original plan was to build a small practice building (the store room), then a two story "barn/house"-the front half living space, the back a garage, workshop/storeroom, and a indoor area for the goats and small animals in cold weather.  After thinking long about the long lintel for the garage door, we changed that to a guest room.  Then we lowered the house-less cob to mix-to a one story with loft bedrooms at the lowest side of the house. The barn area became a TV/lounge room.  Originally the barnhouse was to be a place to live while we built our "final" house.  Just a couple weeks ago, we scratched the final house, and will live in the barnhouse until we feel like building again!!

The Name!

When we first started looking around for a spot to build, we found lots of porcupine quills.  The Afrikaans word for porcupine is ystervark, literally, iron-pig,which I took a liking to.  In emails with a close friend, the