Wednesday, October 17, 2012

A poor video of me putting light clay wood chips in the wall


I know I need to work on my video technique, but I was also working at the time and it is hard to pay attention to both where the camera is pointed and what you are doing while slopping mud.  I just wanted to show what it is like using light clay wood chip.  From the video you can see that the clay isn't too light.  It definitely isn't cob, but we found that if we didn't have enough clay in the mix, the small wood chips wouldn't stick together very well.  The first few batches we did had about the same recipe as light clay straw, but with wood chips replacing the straw.  The results of those first batches were unsatisfactory and the walls started flaking off wood chips when they were rubbed.  With more clay in the mix, it makes it less insulative, it has  more thermal mass, and it is much stronger.