365 days of BTech: Green building technics

These days everyone is very conscious about how building material and buildings effect the enviroment and how we can lower our carbin footprint on earth. There are several systems availible such as generating our own energy for our homes, recycling waste materials, re-using old fittings or building materials evolve to be more sustainable.

Most of the systems and construction materials we know of are newly developed or inproved. Some of our oldest systems are forgetten as cob building. Cob building was used in the 11th - 14th century and in 1994 cob building imerged agaain. This building method is very primitive and traditional.

Cob consist of sand, clay, straw and water. The sand and clay acts as the adhesive of the material and the straw is added for its tensile strenght. It is relativily load bearing in small structures but you can increase the load bearing capacity by adding struts or columns. This building materail is fireproof, inexspensive but very labor intensive. This material can be used to create artistic forms such as curved walls, pizza ovens and sculptures.

On our trip tp Knysna, a few weeks back, we visisted a house built with cob. I can not remember the owners name but I will refer to her as Nina. She reminds me of Nina from 'Fiela se kind'. Nina's house is built from natural materials. Stone wall for the foundations, cob for the internal, external walls and floors and timber frame construction where the house is suspended.

The house is located in the George forest, close to Wilderness.