Even though load-bearing cob houses may not feature a lot of lumber in their construction, you will still need some wood and other materials for your building project. Windows, doors, bricks, and lumber can often be acquired for free from old homes if you are willing to carefully deconstruct them.
Check out this post I wrote about building with reclaimed lumber and recycled materials. Much of the work in getting free building supplies is talking to the right people.
Check out Michael Blaha’s rocket stove mass heater construction story at I Love Cob!. His stove features a fire brick heat riser, a 27 foot long flue pipe, and lots of thermal mass. Check it out. Lots of nice details here.
A freshly assembled reciprocal roof frame
This is a long-delayed post about building my reciprocal roof frame. This entry documents the details of building my reciprocal roof frame, including the type of wood I used, the number of rafters, and the work process itself. I hope that this will be useful for individuals who want to attempt building a similar frame. With the general lack of information about reciprocal roof construction on the internet, I hope this will become a primary resource. Here we go…
I was surprised to receive a comment on my blog from a foreign reader a couple of months ago. It was from The Bund magazine of Shanghai, and they were interested in doing an interview about building my cob house. Needless to say, I was immediately interested. Surprised, too, of course.
Anyway, I just got a copy of the magazine in the mail the other day. It’s a large format weekly magazine, very glossy, very westernized. Smack dab in the middle of high fashion and pop culture is the article about my cob building, with a photo of me (see above) sitting in my (unfinished) little mud house in a dirty t-shirt. Pretty hilarious. (And opposite that photo? An advertisement picturing Jackie Chan. Trippy.)
Fun stuff.
Here is a PDF document of the article: Cob building interview in The Bund
Recently, I wrote an article about building earthen floors for Green Building Elements. Earthen floors are commonplace in straw bale and cob buildings, but they can also be installed in more typical suburban homes.
Check out the full article here: Natural Building 101: How to build an earthen or adobe floor.
Last night, I wrote up a blog entry for Green Building Elements about building a reciprocal roof frame. I wrote a little bit about the concept of the design, the history, and my own experience building a reciprocal roof. I was inspired to write this due to an overall lack of information out there about the concept.
If you’re interested, check out the full article here: The Reciprocal Roof: Beauty, Strength, and Simplicity in a Roof Frame
(P.S. That’s Liat on my roof!)
This afternoon, I did an interview with Tom Tucker of Greenblogosphere.com to talk about building with cob. We talked about my experience building a cob house, the benefits and history of cob, why I chose cob over other materials, etc. We also talked a little bit about life here at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage.
It was really fun to have this talk, and hopefully this audio interview will shed some light on what it’s like to build with cob.
You can listen to the interview below, or visit Greenblogosphere.com to listen to building a house out of cob.
I whipped up a new post for my new blogging job at Green Options, which can be found at Green Building Elements: Natural Building 101: Building an Eco-Friendly Cob House.
This is a sort of introduction to cob building for anyone unfamiliar with the technique. Please check it out!
Tiny House Blog is a website dedicated to featuring tiny houses (er, go figure), including both prefabs and natural building designs. Anyway, they just put up a link to my own cob cottage project.
Yea!
Here’s a great little video (apparently a teaser for a documentary that’s been in the making) about cob design and building, “The House as Living Sculpture”. It has a lot of nice footage of cob homes and the construction process. Check it out:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abYZLmPwgwQ]
Hi there, I’m Ziggy. In 2008, I launched The Year of Mud while building my first natural home. This blog is a collection of personal stories and experiences building with clay, straw, and wood over the past 15+ years. A few of the things that get me fired up are natural plasters, timber framing, & Japanese architecture. Since 2012, we’ve been hosting Natural Building Workshops so you can learn essential skills to build your own natural home.
