features
Cob week
Eco-housing
of the past, present & future
by Mike Carney
If I said to you “how about living in a house made of mud and straw” you’d probably have the same reaction as my partner did.
"Are you serious? Won’t it be cold, damp, dark, smelly, dirty.....?"
To be honest I hadn’t even really considered any of these things. I just had the feeling it was the right thing to do.
You know when there’s something in your life that’s wrong. You can feel it at soul level but intellectually you’re still trying to work out how to hold onto it, for some reason you won’t let go. I’ve been aware that I’ve wanted it to change for a while now, but the jump from where I was to where I want to be has felt too big.
This particular step grew from a visit to the Grand Designs exhibition with my son. I have wanted to live more at one with nature, to be more self-sufficient, to be more “eco”. I was excited by various eco houses coming in kits or ready made, but after I got home and started looking into the prices I realised this isn’t what I was looking for. So, after eco, price was my first draw to Cob – practically nothing.
This excited me at a base level. I could build a house from the ground using just the materials around me and some recycling. I began to do some online research. With a flyer from the exhibition I started at Edwards Cob and read on. The more and more I read the more and more excited I became. These buildings looked beautiful and ticked every eco box I could think of.
I sat my partner down, and briefed her on where it was at. She was concerned for my emotional and mental health. I can see why she was worried.
I decided to book myself on a cob course and see what it was all about. I phoned Edwards Cob to enquire about availability on their courses and they had just had a drop out for the following week. I took this as a sign and booked my place.
Armed with a tent and camping equipment borrowed from a mate I headed off to
I pitched up in the corner of a field at a camp site just ten minutes walk from the course and settled in for the night. Bugger me it was cold that night, but what a beautiful morning. I woke early with the sun breaking on my tent door to the sounds of the dawn chorus.
I arrived at ‘Cob HQ’ with no expectations and feeling pleasantly calm. As our group for the week assembled and we made our introductions, my feelings of this is the right place for me to be at the moment just grew and grew. What a fantastic group. As we went round introducing ourselves everyone was beautifully open and honest and this set the tone for the week, along with heaps of laughter and joy.
Thrown into the mix were the BBC crew there to film us for a piece on Inside Out East (due out in September). Again we were blessed with a great bunch of guys and the presenter got stuck in straight away. After a few awkward moments when we were asked to do a retake of a quip or joke so they could capture it on film, and it not working the second time due to the cheesiness of it, we soon forgot they were there, other than they were there on their own experience and certainly part of it all.
Building with cob is a life changing experience. We all felt it one way or another. We learned to identify what’s needed to make the right mix and then went into mixing it up, dancing in the mud with newly met friends to be, laughing as we mixed in the straw to let’s twist again running through my mind.
Then we were off building our first cob wall. The foundations were already in place so we began. The satisfaction of throwing the cob on and sculpting it was huge, within a couple of hours we had built up to about 2 foot high of wall. As this wall was to be mainly out of the sun the rest of it was to be straw bales rendered with cob. Within a couple of days we were able to step back and admire our first cob wall.
The ease and speed with which we had a wall built was both satisfying and confidence building. Over the week we learned how to build a cob house. From locating, design, guides to planning permission, foundations, walls, windows, doors and roofs to heating, fires, seats and pretty much sculpting anything you want.
All this was set in beautiful countryside looking out over fields and a lake. The food was divine and even the hardened meat eaters loved the veggie lunches, thank you Charlie.
A key ingredient to our week was our teacher Kate Edwards, along with Charlotte, our hosts. The setting and atmosphere which they provided, with a beautiful delivery of information from Kate, was perfect for our learning.
Going cob was a bit like going raw. When I first went raw I was met with a lot of misunderstood conceptions of what I was doing and why, often shocked disbelief. You won’t get enough protein, you won’t get the right oils etc. As I’ve learnt from my partner, this website and my own experience, I went to 100% raw for a month leading up to the cob course, once you fully immerse yourself into something 100% the benefits are beyond anything you could have mentally perceived before.
As with going raw I found similar misconceptions about cob.
A beautiful cob fireplace provides all the extra heat you may need, you can even build heat ducks into your walls or floor a la Romans.
Cob breathes so you get no condensation, no dampness. It sets so hard it has a breaking load of something like 5 tonnes on the wall load for the roof. It’s not so ridged that it flexes, so you’re not getting cracks, in an earthquake it’s the cob buildings that tend to be still standing.
If you’re a Carbon footprint person then building this way is about as good as it gets. You have next to no footprint with production or delivery cost of material as you can dig most of it from your site. The Lime render on the outside takes in CO2 offsetting its production in the atmosphere and you’re not building with any toxic materials, how cool is that.
It’s good for your soul. The flow of the building, the beauty and the curves, the designs you’ve incorporated, the satisfaction of having built it yourself, or even better with a group of friends.
Not only is building with cob a beautiful experience, the textures and feeling of it as you work it into a wall or use it to plaster, you get lost in it. It allows you to get more in touch with yourself and those around you. I can’t recommend trying cob enough.
You can start cobing at any level, from learning the basics by making an outdoor oven, which I have to say cooked the best pizzas, to a studio in your garden, an extension to your house, right up to building your own home.
I’m not sure where all this will take me. My dream is to be able to get some land and build my own cob house, but as yet I’m not in a position to do this. I want to share the beauty of cob and help show how you can improve your life and living conditions for very little cost and great personal satisfaction. My leap of faith involves taking the next step and letting go, trusting that I’ll be taken care of. As I’ve seen over and over in my journey through life when you commit 100% it’ll work, just not as you thought it would...
ILR >> Big thank you to Mike for enlightening us as to the world of cob.
Related Links
Edwards Cob Eco Buildings - where I began & where I'd thoroughly recommend
Cob in Cornwall
Build Something Beautiful
