Cob Home Builder. Mike starts off this episode in Washington state, building a cob house. For those who don’t know, a cob is a loaf-sized ball of mud, clay, sand, straw, and whatever else can be cobbled together. The size was determined because it was easy to transport. Once you’ve got everything mixed together, you can make your cobs, and then you can form the walls of your house.
Once your walls are formed, you can squish your cobs together, thereby losing that initial shape and gaining some strength. And once they start squishing together, you will likely saw them off in some fashion, likely somewhat tapered, to give them even more strength and a bit of stability by making them plumb. You might even want to put a window in the wall to provide some light. In this case, Mike mixed up some cow poo plaster to coat the wall (don’t worry, it only smells for a couple of weeks). After a year or so of construction, you’re left with a smallish house that costs perhaps only $13 per square foot, cheap by anyone’s measure.
Bee Man. From there, it was on to Cupertino, California to tackle the bees. The bees that had taken up residence in the walls of a parsonage, that is. After struggling with bee wrangler David Williams to put together a scaffold system, he and Mike dis-assembled part of the wall and removed the bees handfuls at a time.
Bio-Diesel Man. And to keep with the eco-friendly episode started earlier, finally Mike moved on to Diego’s Fish Tacos to clean out the deep fat fryer, but rather than discarding the precious contents, he collected the used oil and spent the next couple of hours refining it for use in a variety of vehicles. For only a few cents per gallon, and a few hours per batch, you too can free yourself from the dependence on the high prices at the pump. Is it really worth it? Only you can decide that.
Saw the show today. I was most interested in the magnet the was used as a mixer. I just caught the tail end of it and would love to know more about the “magnet mixer”.
Thanks for your time.
Hi Suzanne -
This is, creatively enough, called a ‘magnetic stirring table’. You can find plenty of results on Google for that, but you’ll probably want to search for a ‘magnetic stirrer’ if you want to buy one.
Searching Froogle you can find them for as low as $30 and as high as $500. One is listed as a ‘magnetic stirrer hotplate’ for $159. The episode mentions a heating table, so this might be the type that was used there.
You can find them on eBay as well (use ‘magnetic stirrer’ there too).
Hope this helps!
Would like to know more about David Williams the Bee Man.