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BS: what is a mud cabin
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Subject: BS: what is a mud cabin From: GUEST,mg Date: 18 Feb 11 - 01:24 AM How do you make a cabin out of mud? I can't figure this out...don't they melt? I have never heard of them fired like adobe for example... |
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Subject: RE: BS: what is a mud cabin From: The Fooles Troupe Date: 18 Feb 11 - 01:42 AM Adobe is not 'fired' - merely sun dried. Just Google 'mud building' for an enormous amount of info about mud buildings all around the world. |
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Subject: RE: BS: what is a mud cabin From: Joe Offer Date: 18 Feb 11 - 02:04 AM I've wondered the same thing - how do mud/clay buildings withstand rainstorms is the adobe isn't fired? -Joe- |
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Subject: RE: BS: what is a mud cabin From: gnomad Date: 18 Feb 11 - 03:35 AM I haven't visited the area in question, but the South-West corner of England (Devon in particular) has whole villages made of cob, some buildings being hundreds of years old, others still in construction. Cob is their local version of mud and straw building. The region gets a fair share of rain, so the method of building can certainly stand up to bad weather if done correctly. A TV programme I saw on the subject emphasized a number of points, hope I don't miss any: Walls are built seriously thick at the bottom and are packed down by the builder trampling the mud and clay together. Higher up the walls are slightly thinner, looked to taper to about 18 inches thick. The whole building ends up as one mass, resembling a cast concrete structure rather than blockwork. Roofing (usually thatch) extends well beyond the wall so that much of the wall is shaded from direct assault by rain, and any drips fall well clear of the foot of the wall, thus stopping erosion by splash-back. Some walls have a stone block damp-proof course at the bottom. All walls are painted over on the outside with lime and whitewash, the regular renewal of this outer layer is the main defence against the elements, but allows the structure to rid itself of damp. |
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Subject: RE: BS: what is a mud cabin From: GUEST,Patsy Date: 18 Feb 11 - 06:10 AM Isn't that like the old Whattle and Daub walled Tudor houses? I think that's how you spell that it's a long time since I did History. |
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Subject: RE: BS: what is a mud cabin From: Roger the Skiffler Date: 18 Feb 11 - 06:21 AM Mud, you had mud? We had to make do with dust... (apologies to Monty Python). RtS |
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Subject: RE: BS: what is a mud cabin From: JohnInKansas Date: 18 Feb 11 - 06:55 AM There are lots of variations worldwide, and many different cultures have used "mud" for houses. In the "settler days" in the US prairie states, it was more common to use "sod" for the most primitive houses. In places where there were few trees, you could cut out slabs of sod, and the grass roots would hold it together to be piled like bricks. Walls typically were 6 to 10 inches thick - the width of the slabs, and once the sod was "off the ground" most water ran off and the roots that held the slabs together dried into rather tough "strings" that resisted rotting out and continued to hold the sod together - sometimes for many decades. In places where there were "hills" the "dugout" was also used quite a lot. You'd dig a "pit silo" into the side of a hill, and put sod walls onto the front. Most of the settlers looked to wood for roof rafters, but the covering there was often also sod. I haven't seen any relics of either kind with "roof arches" as would be needed to make a roof with no timbers. In some areas (not very commonly in the US) the mud houses are actually more of a "wattle" construction, with small limbs/twigs woven together, and the "mud" is mixed or rubbed in - like a mortar - just to close the gaps. Sometimes straw (any dead grassy stuff) is mixed with "mud" in the wattle construction or in "mostly just mud" houses, but in both cases the preferred "mud" often is animal waste from whatever large domestic animals are conveniently available. (It dries harder, and once hard is very water-resistant. It also fairly consistently has undigested "fibers" that help strengthen the mortar.) Adobe is generally a little more durable, but it requires a fairly decent access to enough water to make a paste of the local soil in order to form the "bricks," and it's only really successful if the soil used has fairly high clay content. Fortunately the two requirements are "compatible" since in any place that has free running water, even if only seasonally, there's usually enough clay to be found. And straw fairly often was/is used mixed into the adobe bricks for a bit of additional strength. The better durability of adobe becomes questionable in wetter climates, and a well-built sod house may stand up better where there's more than 40-60(?) inches per year of rainfall. Good drainage helps for either. John |
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Subject: RE: BS: what is a mud cabin From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler Date: 18 Feb 11 - 07:34 AM Another common trick is to apply tar to the bottom foot or so of outside walls to help stop problems with "splash- back" from heavy rain, seen it in Somerset and Devon. |
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Subject: RE: BS: what is a mud cabin From: GUEST,leeneia Date: 18 Feb 11 - 05:01 PM I was reading a book about Ireland once, and they said that many cottages were made of rammed earth. It's still dirt, but somehow 'rammed earth' sounds rather strong. I wonder how they did it. I think they had to coat it with whitewash or similar to keep the rain off. |
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Subject: RE: BS: what is a mud cabin From: The Fooles Troupe Date: 18 Feb 11 - 06:04 PM The technique is common in parts of India and Africa. The mud is re-patched every year. Very large mosques, etc can be built with wooden pole reinforcing, which often extends outside the walls, so as to allow easy reattachment of the necessary scaffolding in buildings more than one story tall. Surprising what you can see on Public TV documentaries and Google ... |
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Subject: RE: BS: what is a mud cabin From: Alice Date: 18 Feb 11 - 06:21 PM Rammed earth is a process of compressing by tamping down with a pise a mixture of soil that is screened, comprising mostly sand and clay. I worked for an environmental organization that did a workshop on rammed earth construction back in 1979. I owned 40 acres in the NW corner of Montana back in the 80's that had perfect soil for rammed earth. I built a form and created a large test block of the rammed earth that withstood many years of weather until vandals knocked it down. There are two rammed earth houses in my town. They look like smooth stucco finish from the outside. There are contractors that construct rammed earth buildings. Here is a blog with photos about rammed earth. http://rammedearth.blogspot.com/ |
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Subject: RE: BS: what is a mud cabin From: The Fooles Troupe Date: 18 Feb 11 - 06:23 PM Pise - Rammed Earth. Mud Brick Architecture of Yemen ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`` English: Category for buildings with mud or earth as the dominant material in appearance or construction. Mud can be used to build in several ways: * Unfired clay or mud bricks, also called adobe * Cob, a muddy mixture pressed together to form a wall or other structure * Rammed earth: compressed layers of earth and clay to form a wall or other structure. * Wattle and daub: mud applied to a wooden latticework. Straw or dung may be added to the mud. Wiki - Category:Mud buildings Media in category "Mud buildings" The following 84 files are in this category ~~~~~~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: what is a mud cabin From: open mike Date: 18 Feb 11 - 07:04 PM my former house (a "stick" house--woos frame construction) had a mud room--the entrywaywhere boots and coats could be left when entering the interior. my ancestors lived in a dug out on the Nebraska prairie on their homestead http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dugout_%28shelter%29 there was a two story (rare) sod house near there http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0500/frameset_reset.html? http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0500/stories/0501_0108.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sod_house |
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Subject: RE: BS: what is a mud cabin From: open mike Date: 18 Feb 11 - 07:09 PM more thread drift.. recently a house was built here by friends and neighbors for a family who lost their home in a forest fire. The new structure is made from straw..www.strawbuilding.org/ with a mud covering on the outside. |
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Subject: RE: BS: what is a mud cabin From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 18 Feb 11 - 07:48 PM Adobe brick houses are generally plastered with mud mixed with straw. In the arid SW U. S., the house is re-plastered as needed. Some are up to 400 years old, and some Indian pueblo constructions may be older. Nowadays, the mud plaster is often replaced by stucco. Roofs on adobe houses that have been kept up often have a very slight slant, and rainwater runs off through spouts. The roof is tarred; in the old days often the roof was up to a foot thick, of soil on wood support. Construction has become expensive in cities like Santa Fe, New Mexico, because of labor costs and time required in aging (letting the adobe 'bricks' dry completely before using them in construction). More modern adobe houses often rest on concrete basements. Often the appearance is kept, on a modern house, by applying stucco in a thick, less angular layer. From a distance this looks like adobe. We lived in one in which the stucco was applied over hollow tiles (shaped a lot like concrete blocks that are now common in this style of construction). |
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Subject: RE: BS: what is a mud cabin From: Bert Date: 18 Feb 11 - 11:07 PM It's kinda like a Mudcat cabin without the cat. Other than that, all I know about it is that it's on the hill. |
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Subject: RE: BS: what is a mud cabin From: GUEST,.gargoyle Date: 19 Feb 11 - 08:20 PM Dug Out
Both of sides of my family grandparents lived in "mud cabins."
One, as an infant had her hand chewed by a rat. (It was not easy to strike a light - and the discovery - remained cloaked in darkness - until several times later the lamp was lit) The "star" scar she carried in the palm of her hand through out her life.
The other, making biscuts , had left the top off the flour barrel. He expected to be seriously chastised when a great glob of sod fell into the flour. The greater concern - of his Sunday napping father - was how to remove the four legs of the wandering cow from their roof.
Sincerely,
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