Building with Cob

Cob is a natural building material created from clay, sand, and straw that can be used to build load bearing walls, window and door frames, and much more.

It's an affordable and natural way to build using materials that are typically found locally. In fact, building with earth and natural fibres is a technique used in many places around the world. This style of construction can have different names, like earth building, adobe, mud bricks, etc.

Unlike conventional buildings, cob is a simple way to build that can be an interesting and easy option to build a DIY green home using little, if any, toxic materials.

This is a full tour of a cozy cob micro cabin built by Marie France Roy, a professional snowboarder from Canada. She wanted to build a home with natural and reclaimed materials so the main floor is built with cob – a mix of sand, clay, and straw – and the upper floor is built with reclaimed cedar siding. She also used secondhand windows and other materials that were used or on their way to the landfill to reduce the impact of her project.

For heat, she uses a sealed woodstove and has backup electric heat if she's leaving the house for an extended period of time. For water and waste, she's hooked up to a well and septic.

She is currently using propane for her stove and hot water heater but has bought and activated a system to produce and collect methane using food waste. She hopes to eventually transition to using homemade gas instead of propane.

The tiny cob house is plugged onto the grid but she also has a small solar panel array to feed renewable energy onto the grid.

At Cottage Grove, Oregon, a group of remarkable people have come together to create buildings out of earth that teach us how to live more simply and closer to the earth.

We are going to meet:
    * Michael G. Smith, who trained as a civil engineer, but turned, instead, to this more ecologically sane form of building
    * Ianto Evans, a Welsh landscape architect, who adapted traditional European earth building, or cob, so we could stop using our houses to hide from nature
    * and Linda Smiley, a therapist with a special interest in sculpting sacred spaces.

And we will visit two beautiful cob buildings created at a fraction of the cost of conventional housing and see people from all walks of life, with no prior experience, mixing cob and building with it.

The Cob Cottage Company is now in Coquille, Oregon. Their website is http://www.cobcottage.com/

When Gary Zuker bought an undeveloped piece of land outside of Austin (Texas) 25 years ago, he knew the only way he could afford a home on it was to build it himself. With no building experience, he immersed himself in architecture books at the University of Texas (where he works as a computer engineer).

He fell in love with medieval straw-clay cottages and cob buildings from around the world. After just a day learning the technique on another build, he was ready to build his own home.

Besides advice from an architect friend to use a scissor-truss system for roof support, some help with framing, stone-work and plumbing, Zuker worked alone (no building permits were required in Travis County at that time). The build ended up taking him 3 years (nights and weekends while working full-time) and cost about $40,000 ($25,000 to build the house and $15,000 for the well and septic system).

Zuker was heavily influenced by the classic design handbook A Pattern Language (written mainly by architect Christopher Alexander) so rather than designing the home ahead of time, he waited to decide on details until after the home was under construction.

Have you ever dreamed of another kind of life? Not the job that you don’t want to go off to in the morning, or the house you have to keep on paying for year after year, but a life closer to the earth, a little place in the country that you build yourself, a garden and some solar panels for electricity, time to be with those you love and to do the things you most want to do. An impossible dream? Maybe not.

Right now people all over are working to create an alternative to a consumer society that gives us less and less satisfaction and is more and more destructive to the earth and to us, as well. Explore the world of natural building and meet some of its pioneers who are creating beautiful and inexpensive houses out of earth and straw, houses that you can make, too. This is a way of building that can transform how you see the earth and yourself.

Visit: Linda Smiley and Ianto Evans who pioneered the use of building with earth, straw and sand called cob in the U.S. and who now run the North American School of Natural Building in Coquille, Oregon where they and their students have used natural building methods to create a little village. Coenraad and Courtney Rogmans who took a piece of undeveloped land, built straw bale and cob buildings complete with solar electricity and a water catchment system, and who teach natural building workshops.

Taylor Starr at White Oak Farm, an organic farm and educational center, which is putting the final touches on a striking timber-framed straw bale and cob community center. Brendan Flanagan, with his family and friends, turned a remote wooded hillside into a snug community of homes and gardens.

Rob Bolman, an advocate of incorporating natural building techniques into mainstream building practices, who created an ecovillage in the middle of Eugene, Oregon, and who speaks passionately about the link between natural building and social justice.

Meka Bunch who after only a week-long workshop, built his own elegant cob cottage and who works sharing natural building with people abroad.

And Kiko Denzer, a sculptor and cob builder, and his wife Hannah, an organic gardener and baker, who transformed a dilapidated outbuilding in the country into a cozy cob home surrounded by beautiful gardens. For more on this subject go to http://innerexplorations.com/