Building With Cob Made Our Ancestors Cooler

Cob Cottage in Rosedale Neighborhood
Austin, Texas (courtesy of Mina Loomis)

I spent childhood summers with my grandparents in their 1846 home in the city of Aguascalientes, Mexico. They had no air conditioning but didn’t need it because their house had two-foot thick adobe walls. Humans have been using adobe and cob since prehistoric times to build shelters, particularly in climates with extreme temperatures.

Cob is a building material made from a mix of clay, sand, straw, water and earth, similar to adobe. It's not only fireproof and resistant to earthquakes, but it's also inexpensive and uses locally available materials. Most importantly, cob has high thermal mass that makes it easier to keep cob buildings warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

Read the rest of the article in the Austin Post.