i love your cob design !! just a small word of caution, i lived in a cob house for a little over a year and really struggled with carbon monoxide issues. i never really figured it out—I’ve been living in cabins and huts and other woodstove-heated structures for a while and it was only the cob house (with its central hearth) that gave us so much trouble. many chilly nights spent around the campfire outside waiting for the house to air out :’)
also I don’t know if it’s relevant on your land but we dug the bedroom a bit deeper into the ground, lined it doubly with stone, and it was really great for maintaining consistent temperatures in both summer and winter !
thank you so much for these words of caution! Advice from someone who already ran into these problems and has experience with it is extremely valuable to me, and I do need to figure out a lot more before I'm sure about how to build a completely safe and clean fireplace. Possibly it needs to be out of metal and only covered with cob because cob does allow air to get thru, so it is possible it would allow carbon monoxide thru as well. I'll definitely look into it more!
Could you tell me if the central hearth had a door that was closed, or if it was open fire?
It's so cool that a bedroom lined with stone has consistent temperatures, thinking about it makes me feel like the stone would be very cold in the winter, but I'm assuming it was insulated from the ground so it was fine? What material was used to connect the stones together?
Thank you for this feedback, I really appreciate it :)
