Cob walls

Murphybear

is anyone familiar with cob walls?

We are moving to a Devon farmhouse soon and I know that putting up kitchen units is a bit tricky but what about things such as pictures?

EachPenny

Murphybear wrote: »

is anyone familiar with cob walls?

We are moving to a Devon farmhouse soon and I know that putting up kitchen units is a bit tricky but what about things such as pictures?

Lightweight pictures should be no problem, you ought to be able to (gently) knock small nails into the wall - far easier than with brick walls.

One thing to be wary of is if the walls have been plastered with a thin coat of hard modern plaster - this is likely to fracture as it isn't supported underneath as well as it would be on brick or block walls.

Hanging anything heavy will be a problem, there just isn't the strength in the wall to take fixings.

FreeBear

EachPenny wrote: »

Lightweight pictures should be no problem, you ought to be able to (gently) knock small nails into the wall - far easier than with brick walls.

One thing to be wary of is if the walls have been plastered with a thin coat of hard modern plaster - this is likely to fracture as it isn't supported underneath as well as it would be on brick or block walls.

Agreed - Nails would be sufficient for hanging most pictures. But..... Cob houses are generally built on a stone plinth. With some houses, the stone could go as high as the first floor. Driving nails in might prove to be a problem if the stone goes up that far.

Now for a couple of cautionary links.
https://www.mikewye.co.uk/gallery/cement-render/
http://www.propertysurveying.co.uk/newsletter/?page_id=7762
http://www.devonlive.com/warning-cob-wall-owners-building-crushes-van/story-20693045-detail/story.html

Niv

We had a little trouble in our place to get a good grip, what we ended up doing was to batten the wall and put up some ply then attach the wall units to that. It allows the units to be mounted at the desired location but the battening is located at parts of the wall where there is a good hold.

trailingspouse

As cob is essentially mud and stone, you don't want it to dry out too much. As a result, cob houses can often be damp, and as a result of that there may well be some form of damp-proof membrane between the wall and the plaster (bitumized lath was the way to go when I was renovating a cob cottage in the 80s). If you breach that membrane (by knocking nails etc through), you could potentially have problems.

Murphybear

Thanks all, looks like my husband has got some reading to do:D