Sustainable 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. 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 ‘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, debark them and soak them in the river to wash the last of the sap out so they are then not suseptable to woodborer. Local grasses will be used to thatch the roof. We buy used doors, etc. at auctions, which are repaired and re-conditioned for use on our building. Many of the windows used are recycled motor car windows. We will be building a second cob structure which will house workshop participants.
- STRAWBALE. This involves initially building a stone foundation for the walls upon which straw bales are then stacked and secured. A wooden framework around the straw bales is also used to support the roof. The walls are then plastered with lime render.
We will be building a little cottage as well as a chicken coop using a combination of cob and straw bale methods.
- WATTLE and DAUB. This structure is built with a wooden framework with thinner branches of wood woven between the frames. The wooden structure (usually wattle) is then covered with cob or earth (daub).
We’ll use wattle and daub to build the workshop and garage. The latter will also be thatched.
- DRY STONE WALLING. Stones are creatively placed, balancing one upon the other, to build a wall without using any form of mortar.
Anna has started building dry stone walls around the boundary of the property. We also plan to build a shed using this method.
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.
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