Natural building is about harvesting  building materials from within a 5km radius, using recycled materials, instead of visiting the hardware shop or builders suppliers. Using no cement and as few as possible manufactured items.  Using materials that don't contribute to global warming with their carbon footprint, by having a high manufacturing process. (It's actually about having a lot of fun with what is outside your back door)

COB is the basic material used in natural building.

BUILDING WITH COB. Cob-building requires mixing clay, sand and straw with water by stomping on it with either bare feet or wearing Wellington boots. When it has been thoroughly mixed into a dough-like consistency it is ready to be used for building walls, cupboards, etc. One simply takes the cob in one’s hands and places it on to the emerging wall. Lots of fun and easy to learn! The foundations of the wall are built with stone(footing). We then build up with cob, placing the door frames and windows as we build. To complete the walls we plaster with lime render. Lime is one of the world’s hardest and most endurable building material. 

Our challenge is to build using materials from ‘outside our back door’ and as little factory-produced material as possible unless it is recycled. We also use local sources (including our own land) for earth, clay and stones. We cut trees in the nearby forest, and our property, debark them and soak them in the river to wash the last of the sap out so they are then not susceptable to woodborer.. We buy used doors, windows, etc. at auctions, which are repaired and re-conditioned for use on our building, rather than using new wood. Many of the windows used are recycled motor car windows.

  The beauty of building with natural materials is that if in a couple of hundred years no one has maintained the house it will simply return to the earth with only a couple of motor car windows and bottles left to be used by someone else. 

  STRAWBALE. This involves initially building a stone foundation for the walls upon which straw bales are then stacked and secured. A wooden framework  used to support the roof , is constructed, the straw bales become infil. The walls are first plastered with an earth plaster (cob) and then with lime render.  

  WATTLE and DAUB. This structure is built with a wooden framework with thinner branches woven between the frames. The woven structure (usually wattle) is then covered with cob or earth (daub), leaving the frame work showing. This is then plastered.

ADOBE is the making of bricks from cob and then building in a masonary  manner.