Engineering properties of Cob as a building material

Abstract

The present study looks into some properties of Cob as a building material. Cob is an ancient technique of building, which is a combination of sand and clay, mixed with straw and water. The study determined some of the engineering properties of cob for its suitability as building material. The soil sample used was obtained from a site in front of the Federal polytechnic Ado-Ekiti, in Nigeria. The plastic index and the plastic limit results for the soil are 23.8 and 40.5%, respectively. Also straw content of about 1-1.5% gave the highest compressive strength at optimum moisture content of 2-4%. © 2006 Asian Network for Scientific Information.