A modern cob home- Cobtun House- in England won the Royal Institute of British Architects’ sustainability award and went on to sell for well over a million dollars (750,000 pounds). And cob is just a simple mix of clay and straw (though sand or some sort of grit is often used as well).

Cob is cheap- the walls of Cobtun House cost just 20,000 pounds- and infinitely recyclable. It’s also a very green building material for plenty of other reasons.

It’s a local material: the clay and sand are most often extracted from the property where the building is built. It’s energy efficient: cool in the summer, warm in the winter and fire-resistant. It’s efficient with space since cob buildings are smaller than the average American home.

A cob home is also a perfect DIY project since the materials can be mixed with your hands and feet and molded freeform- without support structures- to create a house (See books like The Hand-Sculpted House: A Practical and Philosophical Guide to Building a Cob Cottage).

In this video, Margaret Krome-Lukens of North Carolina’s Pickard’s Mountain Eco-Institute shows us the cob home- refreshingly cool on a hot summer’s day- that interns Mike and Greg are building for her on the property. They talk about the horse manure used as an additive to the walls, how the material is so easy to sculpt, the green roof and living small. Since her new home is less than 150 square feet, Margaret talks about the joy of giving up stuff to move in.

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.

The house itself, approximately 700 sf, is a tribute to Rina’s architectural design skills. The house is simple in shape, rectangular, but tastefully divided on the inside with curving walls that transform the angularity of the outside into subtle interior sculpture. As a whole, the little adobe house is a beautiful work of art and yet at the same time, ever so practical and functional.

The wood was local, as were the adobes used for the walls. The finish plasters were simple and elegant, a medium brown blend of finely screened clay with sand and straw. For me, one of the beautiful things about Rina’s little house is that, instead of being a cheap imitation (Santa Fe style) of the old pueblo style of building, her house is a thoughtful interpretation of the past and yet very contemporary. The comfort level is high, the passive solar design requires little to no additional heating or cooling.

To view more photos of the construction and see more of Rina’s house visit Bill’s blog.

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 doing enjoyable but physical work.

This workshop is a 10-day intensive designed to prepare you to build a cob home.

Here is what you will learn:

• Get hands on experience in each stage of construction so you can go home with the confidence and skills to build your own house.
• Alternating work and class lecture will cover safety, financing, building siting, planning, permitting, foundations, walls, windows, doors, roofs, plasters, floors, sculptural work, electricity and plumbing.
• Use a range of cob construction techniques from hand and foot mixing to tractor-cob.
• Bring your building plans, designs and ideas to discuss with experienced builders with an eye toward framing a do-able project and realistic expectations.

Lodging and meals are available and this is a family friendly workshop. To get the full scoop go the Natural Building Network website.

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.

The Opal miners of Australia have been living underground for years. http://www.outback-australia-travel-secrets.com/coober-pedy-underground-homes.html Starting with crude carved out cave like homes they now have elaborate underground residences. We are not suggesting anyone carve out a cave, but underground living can be very economical. It’s much better if you can have either a light well, or dig into a hillside and have a south facing glass wall which can also serve as a solar wall. You can plant a vegetable garden on the roof, and by the way, the vegetables will grow faster from the heat below the ground warming the roots.

Today I would like to discuss some construction methods, and systems for inexpensive underground homes. Here is some construction information from the Internet. http://www.toolbase.org/Technology-Inventory/Foundations/wood-foundations And there is plenty more where that came from. The saving in concrete alone is considerable. Most of the actual building, and sealing of the “box” is just plain old common sense if you follow the insulating and sealing instructions on the foundation plans so that the water does not leak in. As far as basic construction goes, the link above should get you started in the right direction. I like the idea of using used shipping containers myself.

Today I want to discuss the systems that are common to all homes above, or below ground. The underground home systems will be less expensive though because less energy is required, so therefore less energy has to be collected.

The systems that you will need to consider include a LED, or a CFL lighting system. These can be done with either low voltage 12 volt direct current, or in the higher voltage 120 volts alternating current. These systems when powered by solar are now very simple and inexpensive. We are also currently experimenting with a three volt very low power lighting system. These new lighting systems do not require a large number of solar modules. Solar electric systems only get expensive when you start adding on high power (wattage) consumption appliances. Always remember that if you are off the power grid, and want to use 120 volts AC you will need an Inverter. An inverter is an electronic device that converts direct current into alternating current. For example, convert 12 volts DC to 120 Volts AC. Inverters do waste some power, as much as ten percent, but the 120 volt AC output is very convenient. There are two types of inverters on the market. The least expensive is what we call the modified sine wave, and certain equipment will not run properly on the modified sine wave units Then we have the more expensive full sine wave inverter, and all equipment runs perfect on it. I have been considering using surface mounted wiring systems. I think they are simplest to install, easier to inspect, and save a great deal of labor when finishing the interior. This is great for the DIY folks.

You will also need hot water for bathing, cleaning, and heating. You may want to tie in a very small fan coil through which you can circulate warm water if extra heat back up is needed for your space. This is just one method. The fan can be powered by 12 volts DC or 120 volts AC. We also use 12 volts DC to run well pumps, cattle watering tanks and small irrigated garden plots.

You are also going to need a refrigerator. Try to get by with the smallest, most efficient model possible so you will not be spending a fortune on extra storage batteries and extra solar modules. You may want to consider using a propane gas refrigerator, dryer, and backup water heater. Those items will cut down on the number of solar electric and hot water collectors you will have to purchase. It’s a great trade off.
Just remember that gas powered appliances must be well ventilated. Personally , I would design a special vent system for them.

Heating of course, is critical in cold climates. I’m just giving you an overview here. There are three ways, off hand, that I can think of, and they do not involve rocket science. Also remember that you will be picking up considerable “waste” heat from your cooking, appliances, lighting, and body heat.

The first method is solar hot water heat which can be the most expensive to install in a regular home, but not too bad in a micro home. It is also easy to store in the form of hot water. The next method is solar hot air collectors that are very simple to build. If you have solar hot air collectors you have another choice to make. You can use them to simply blow hot air into your home all day, and quit when the sun quits, or you can store the heat from the hot air system in a rock bin, or a similar device That becomes a heat sink or solar battery as some prefer to call it. The third method for heating with solar is the passive method which goes back thousands of years. Sometimes old technology is good! Passive solar is based on using the sunlight to heat a thermal mass directly. It works much better now with the invention of glass walls. The thermal mass can be barrels of water, rocks, concrete blocks, concrete walls, and concrete floors just to mention a few. This is best accomplished behind a double glass wall. These methods have been used in greenhouses for a very long time. You know how your car feels when you climb in even on a sunny, but very cold winter day. It’s passive solar heat. It’s a very simple concept.

I am also a very strong proponent of composting toilets and gray water systems. I can’t tell you how important this is. Every state that I know of is extremely concerned about both black and gray water disposal. I recommend using a well made composting toilet with ventilation out through a roof stack and a solar stack fan. The gray water including the separated urine should be filtered and channeled to the lawns, shrubs, and gardens. I am opposed to lawns myself, and do not have one. We use native plant gardens. Most of the waterways in the world have been ruined because of the polluted discharges from overtaxed sewerage treatment plants, and they are also a huge waste of money. We have much better ways to handle raw sewerage now, and composting is a major part of it. Many useful chemicals can be extracted from human waste and it was a common practice in Europe in past centuries. Yes, sometimes the old technology is better. It just doesn’t always make for good political pork barrel projects.

While we are on the subject of vent fans you must be sure to plan out a thorough ventilation system. This is an absolute must, or you will suck all of the oxygen out of the building and replace it with CO2 or worse. If you have combustible fuel heater you must have a CO detector an an air inlet for combustion air. It can be arranged so that a portion of, or all of the incoming fresh cold air passes over the heater. If you have a small wood stove you can run a 5 volt computer fan in a fresh air duct using a thermo electric generator that runs from heat on the side of the stove and in turn, runs the fan.

In summary, we have discussed some construction methods required to build an underground micro home, and many of the major systems required above or below ground. If you are unsure about how to wire, heat, cool, ventilate, or any other safety items always consult with others and get several opinions. Never be too proud to ask. That’s how I learned. I talk to many people during normal business hours, and try to share the knowledge that I have with them. You would be surprised at how much I learn from them too. My own personal goal is to see as many people in this world as possible be able to have decent place to live, and earn a decent living. The key word being earn! Your home doesn’t have to be a palace, and it doesn’t have to be a cramped tow person space capsule either. I would like to see all future homes fully off the power grid. It’s not that expensive, and it’s a matter of both security and economics. Please let me tell you that no child of the future should ever have to go through what many in our generation have had to bear regarding housing and cold weather. We owe it to all of them to leave the Planet a better place to live in than the way we found it, and also with a self sustaining economy. Not this train wreck economy we have now. It will be you, and not any government that accomplishes that goal – Trust me!

© 2010 Walt Barrett President A to Z Global Marketing Inc.
Contact Walt Barrett for permission to reprint.

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 are giving serious thought to building an underground micro home test bed so that we can better deal with the cold and windy winters. Our test model, due to space restrictions, will most likely be 100 square feet with only a solar passive heating light wall, but for a full size home design I am thinking about using four shipping containers arranged in a rectangle with a large tempered glass ceiling light well in the center.

Each container would have a door, or doors opening into a central light well patio area with a year round garden. We could cover the exterior walls with waterproof foundation sealer, and then glue on foam to the exterior the same way we cover our concrete foundations now as per our local building codes. The entire project could be set on a suitable concrete slab. The location can be either on a flat lot, or dug into the side of a hill where an additional solar wall could be added. An important note is that you must have at least two escape routes to the outside in case of fire. One can be in a corner of the light well.

Many people already realize that by going mostly underground the first 55°F in the home temperature is a 100% free ride. When you add to that the heat gain from people, refrigerators, cooking, lighting, washers and dryers etc. you pick up a considerable heat gain. However there is also going to be heat lost through ventilation because no one wants to live in a swamp filled with stale air either. Light wells and solar walls can be an asset in the day time for solar heat gain, but must be insulated at night. There are several ways to accomplish this. Some methods are insulated curtains, sliding walls, Zome walls, or sliding covers. Solar light walls and light wells must also be shaded in the warm weather or you will find yourself living in a large solar oven.

If you design your underground container home properly it will cost far less money than a conventional above ground home, and the heating and cooling will be a virtual free ride if you engineer the home properly. This is not a new idea by the way. I had several neighbors that lived in poured foundations during the depression of the nineteen thirties, and some others joined them right after world war two when we had a bad slump in the economy. This was a common practice here in New England during the thirties and forties. You do not need a large central heating system, or air conditioning system either. I also know several people that own large above the ground homes that they can no longer afford to heat. They have made apartments in their cellars to live in in the winter. They drained the above ground plumbing for the winter. They are saving a fortune in heating bills, and they move back upstairs in the warm weather.

People have been living under ground for thousands of years because in most cases they had no choice. With the ever rising prices of fuel we now have to take a long hard look back into the past, because the past may be our future again. I advise you to give it some thought, and play with some designs of your own to make the idea more palatable. Personally, I’m going to work on it, and my design will be totally off the power grid.
A little imagination goes a long way.

© 2010 Walt Barrett President A to Z Global Marketing Inc.
Contact Walt Barrett for permission to reprint.

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.

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:

Having spent those few days at the Cob Cottage Company, I have felt my desire to continue building with cob strengthened. I love the idea of building a sheltered cob seating area at Dancing Rabbit, or building a couple of very small cob cabins for visitors, guests, etc. I also adore the idea of building cob walls, and trying to make that work at Dancing Rabbit to create and define space. I also have some ideas of teaching cob building, and hosting actual workshops.

We shall see. But I can definitely say my visit to Ianto and Linda’s land has been very motivational. -Ziggy

Photo Credits – Ziggy

EcoNests are simple, elegant, and healthful handcrafted dwellings that welcome owner participation in their construction. They are the product of a design/build collaboration by Baker-Laporte: Robert Laporte, a timber framer, author, natural house building pioneer and teacher, and Paula Baker-Laporte, an award-winning architect, Bau-Biologist (building biologist), teacher and author specializing in healthy and ecological design. The EcoNest utilizes natural building techniques including: timber framing, light clay/straw walls, earth plastering, and natural, non-toxic finishes throughout.

Most of the EcoNests are a little larger than a tiny house, but the philosophy remains the same: create a healthy sancutary.

The smallest stock plan for an EcoNest is 700 square feet. But Paula said that Baker-Laporte, and their workshop participants, build quite a few “Hummingbirds”. Small studios without a bathroom or kitchen that are about 200 square feet. A Hummingbird can be integrated into a community with other small buildings that contain bathrooms, kitchens and sleeping areas.

EcoNests are built with timber framing and light clay and straw. Unlike standard building methods that employ vapor barriers, clay/straw walls actually breathe. They are weatherproof yet porous, and they allow for the slow transfer of fresh air and moisture much like human skin. The one-foot thick, light clay/straw walls are a unique combination of insulation and thermal mass, keeping the interior cozy and warm in winter and cool in summer.

The light clay/straw walls are then coated with earth plaster. The walls are ideally suited to plaster because they are perfectly flat but coarse in texture so that the plasters adhere to them without needing lathe. Earth plastered walls are both durable and beautiful. The floors of the houses are made of natural materials such as earth and stone.

Econests have been built in many different locations including Portland, the Northeast and Canada. Most of them are primarily in the American Southwest.

Baker-Laporte offers workshops on how to build your own Econest. You can take workshops in timber framing, clay/fiber construction, roofing, natural plasters and finishers, an Econest intensive, or builder training and apprenticeships.

Photos Courtesy of Baker-Laporte and Associates

By Christina Nellemann for the (Tiny House Blog)

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 on his site.

Samuel Gray from Abiquiu, New Mexico built this cute little 12′ x 10′ adobe structure and currently uses it as a part time residence. He plans to move into it full time in a few years.

Sam spent $3000 building the structure and did a beautiful job. To read more about it please go to Tiny House Design and read the full story and view more pictures.

Photo Credit: Sam Gray

by Kent Griswold (Tiny House Blog)

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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 ebay for $700. Even with a tiny woodstove, the camper wasn’t up to an Iowa winter so we journeyed to Oregon where the summer before we had done cob building workshop with Ianto Evans and Linda Smiley.

Cob is an ancient building method that combines clay soil, sand and straw in a free form, frameless structure. The typical thatched cottage of southern England was built with cob and Ianto, a 70 year old Welshman, has led the cob revival. The book he wrote with his wife Linda and Michael G. Smith is aptly titled, The Hand-Sculpted House. Modern cob structures often take full advantage of cob’s sculptural possibilities with curving walls, dragon reliefs and frog mouth pizza ovens.

When Lin and I returned to Iowa early in the spring (actually, a little too early), we started digging a foundation for our own cob cottage. We had no intention of trying to stuff all our activities into a small house. By this time we had built an open shed out of recycled wood and roofing to house a summer kitchen, outdoor shower and workshop. We had no desire to move indoors but we didn’t want to be forced to travel all winter either. So we designed a 14 by 18′ winter room with a high pitched roof to give us a sleeping loft.

Our photo website http://www.pbase.com/hapm/ourhouse has details of our building process. In Iowa the subsoil is high in clay, great for building but not good for drainage. Our gravel foundation drains to daylight as does a curtain drain around the high side of our building site. After starting the walls with old concrete and limestone, cobbing began on June 1, 2008. For the next 10 weeks our days began with muddy feet as we mixed our house, batch by batch on tarps. Many new friends would be made doing the cob dance. This must be the most low tech way to build a permanent structure. Whole families joined in and even two year toddlers were able to contribute.

By the end of August the roof was on and we were no longer losing sleep trying to keep our cob covered from the Iowa rains. After another two months of plastering and doing the cob floor, we moved in, just in time to crank up the woodstove. We spent $7,000 on the house and none of it was for labor. Most of the money went into the windows and roof system.

In the “developed” world, houses are made to be plugged in to existing infrastructure. The modern house doesn’t function without connections to water, sewer, electric power and often natural gas. This dependency on infrastructure strikes me as a huge risk considering the current potential for environmental and economic changes and to say nothing of Murphy’s law. In our little house we filter rainwater for drinking. We heat with scrap wood. Our electricity comes from a small photovoltaic system. Our only connection to anything is a phone line. Because our lifestyle is a small step away from camping we are quite content with our minimal facilities.

Tiny houses will play a big role in creating a sustainable future for mankind on earth. Almost half of our countries carbon footprint is caused by the manufacture and maintenance of our structures. For Lin and I, the tiny house is part of our goal to live cooperatively in nature. Based on the hundreds of people who have visited and helped with our construction, this is clearly a shared vision.

We are coming to the end of our second building season on the land. Two more houses have sprung up. One is a strawbale house that we are helping to build for my folks with Brad Young the paid main builder. The other is a 14×14′ bedroom/house that we are building with our daughter Anna. http://www.pbase.com/hapm/annahouse This bale/cob hybrid will have a living roof and will cost half as much as our house. The wall building that took 10 weeks with our cob house took one week with Anna’s bale/cob. The bales in the walls will have a much higher insulation value than straight cob. Anna will use her grandmother’s kitchen and bath, another example of sharing and saving.

By Hap Mullenneaux for the (Tiny House Blog)

Cob Loft Bed

Cob House Kitchen

Wood Stove and Stairs

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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 in and has set up a page with a recipe for building a cob house on his blog. Here it is in a nut shell:

With $3000 for supplies and nine months of full time labor, Ziggy was able to build GOBCOBATRON, a small cob house with interior dimensions of roughly 15′x13′, and a footprint of (again, roughly) 20′x18′. Practically all of the labor was completed by hand (and foot!), including making and applying all of the cob.

Here’s what Ziggy actually bought, and what he paid for in building supplies:

• sand (just over 30 tons total) – $507
• gravel (about 13 tons total) – $177
• straw (16 bales) – $36 (most straw I used was free)
• black walnut scrap lumber – $100
• misc. lumber – $20
• windows – $220 (two casement, one double hung window)
• electrical – $28
• galvanized wire – $30
• nails – $100 (I couldn’t believe how expensive nails are)
• raw linseed oil (for floor) – $72
• EPDM pond liner $622
• polycarbonate for skylight $400

and for the rocket stove:

• firebricks – $70
• flue pipe – $228

It’s true… you can build your own cob house with little money, but with lots of time and enthusiasm. There’s nothing quite like the experience of building your own home with little more than your hands.

Visit Ziggy’s blog for the complete story.

Thanks Ziggy for sharing your journey with us in building your cob house.

by Kent Griswold (Tiny House Blog)

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