Earth/Cob

A Tiny Cob Home, Modern Hobbit House

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It’s estimated that half of the world’s population lives in earth buildings, but for many countries this type of architecture was until recently fairly rare. Now materials like rammed earth, cob, compressed earth and mud brick are experiencing a comeback. A modern cob home- Cobtun House- in England won the … Read more

Rina Swentzell’s Adobe House

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Judy introduced me to Rina Swentzell’s house and I am really impressed. This house does not fit in the tiny house size but fits more in the small size but I find the simplicity and the beauty of the home well worth sharing for inspiration and ideas.

The house is based in Northern New Mexico and was designed for the grandmother of Bill Steen’s children and Athena’s mother. The grandchildren were involved in the construction and were able to show and develop there construction talents.

Benito worked on the building from start to finish, being there from the foundations through the walls andfinish plasters. Anything that was done with wood, from the roof to the finish carpentry and furniture.

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Cob Workshop and Class

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The Natural Building Network is offering a Cob Workshop this summer at the Mariposa Ecovillage in Amarillo, Texas. This is a practical hands-on cob workshop designed to give you building skills through first hand experience and practice. Be prepared to get dirty! We will be spending most of each day … Read more

Underground Micro Homes Part 2

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Guest post by Walt Barrett

We have already established in a previous article for the tiny house blog that by building a home underground there are huge advantages when it comes to heating, and cooling. Starting from an average underground base temperature of 55° F it’s an easy jump to hold a small underground home to a temperature range of 65° to 75° Fahrenheit.

Now an underground home can be as simple as a pure survival model such as burying an old van, school bus, truck body or shipping container in the side of a hill or a hole in the ground with a combination stair well – light well, or it can be a well designed, and insulated modern home complete with all the necessary systems as a totally modern above ground home. One of the main differences is that the underground home design will certainly use far less energy, and it will be far less expensive to build if designed properly. If you miss the view of an above ground home, assuming there is a view to begin with, I suggest a TV wired to a web cam with a 360 degree sweep. Plus, you can always step outside to enjoy the view and contemplate the thousands of dollars that you are saving.

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Underground Micro Home

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Guest Post by Walt Barrett part 1. Here in New England it gets pretty cold in the winter, and the temperature hovers around the freezing mark. We have already built a 128 square foot micro home to use as a test bed for our energy saving products, and now we … Read more

Ziggy visits Cob Cottage Company

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Ziggy, who built his own cob house sent me a note telling me about his visit to the the Cob Cottage Company in Oregon.

He just put up a post with a slide show of pictures of his visit. He went to visit Ianto Evans and Linda Smiley in their home in Coquille, Oregon.

Ianto and Linda are two very influential cob building pioneers in North America, and authors of The Hand-Sculpted House, the number one go-to book for cob construction.

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Be sure and watch his slide show and read his post as he covers a lot of good information on cob building and what he learned from his visit. Here is what Ziggy came away with from his visit:

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EcoNests

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I first saw an EcoNest about 9 years ago and had forgotten about them until now. Even after studying many different types of natural building, Econests will continue to be one of my favorites because of their beautiful resemblance to the curves and colors of nature. They might even be the closest way to be outdoors without stepping out the door.

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EcoNests are simple, elegant, and healthful handcrafted dwellings that welcome owner participation in their construction.

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Tiny Adobe Casita

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I am out of town today and was not able to get a detailed post up, so thought I would share with you a post Michael at Tiny House Design put  up a week ago. I wanted to make sure that our readers saw this cool little adobe casita featured … Read more

Hap and Lin’s Cob House Journal

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In the fall of 2007 my wife Lin and I gave up our condo and pitched a tent in an Iowa field to live immersed in nature and without debt. The tent was soon flattened by a thunderstorm and replaced with a tow behind camper that we picked up on … Read more

Recipe for Building a Cob House

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Over the past nine months we have been following Brian or Ziggy as his friends call him build his cob house. You can check out the last two posts on the build here and here. Ziggy emailed me Friday night to tell me he has completed his home and moved … Read more

Building with Cob

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Those of you who have an interest in building with cob as in the Little Cob Cabin posted recently, will enjoy this site by Brian Liloia one of our readers. Brian is a 23 year old currently living at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, learning to fulfill his desires to live more … Read more

Little Cob Cabin

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Hi Everyone. Sorry it has been so long since the last post. My computer’s mother board started to die and it took a few days to get it replaced. I need to get a back up computer in the near future. Today we are going to look at a cob … Read more