“We think it’s going be a nice flagship to help more cob designs go through the permitting process,” says Anthony Dente, an engineer working to get the project permitted. “It’s a nice project because the clients are on board with the struggle it takes to get nonstandard building materials through.
“We believe cob by its nature is better structural material for earthquake country,” he added. “It’s been pushed to the backwoods on a non-permit basis because it’s hard to fit into the boxes of code permitting for what is called a safe structure.”
Claudine Desiree, founder of Cruzin’ Cob in Santa Cruz, Calif., says she spent $20,000 getting her 200-square-foot cob studio to meet building code requirements—although only for day use. The structure had to be reinforced with a wire mesh and covered with French lime plaster, she says. It’s the first engineered cob structure to receive a permit in Santa Cruz County, says her engineer, Brad Streeter.
“New Zealand has a cob code they use,” Desiree says. “There’s the same earthquake risk, and it’s a developed country. That’s the direction we need to be going in to save trees, save concrete and to build ecologically harmonious buildings.”
Contemporary cob structures are built on rubble-filled trenches or concrete foundations, and they require a roof with an overhang. Layers of viscous cob are applied to form the walls. Smooth reinforcing steel can be used to create a tension system to tie the wall together for protection against earthquakes.
In other countries, including the U.K., Germany and Ireland, cob has a long and distinguished pedigree. Much of the village charm in Southwest England comes from whitewashed, thatched homes built with cob, dating back to Elizabethan times.
“In England, they’re grandfathered in,” says Massey Burke, who is assisting with Tong’s guesthouse. “They know how they stand up, whereas it’s kind of a new thing in our culture.” Burke is a designer and an advocate of natural building methods like straw bale and cob.
Turner’s studio was designed by Burke, whose own cob structure in El Sobrante won a 2013 green building award from Sustainable Contra Costa. The organization called it “a beautifully creative expression of cob building traditions, one of the oldest natural building methods of the earth.”
“You have to experience one to see what it’s like to live in an earthen building,” Burke says. People’s views of them change, “once they see you can dig these materials out of the ground and make something beautiful with them.”
©2014 San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.)
Distributed by MCT Information Services
