Guest Articles: Advice from a cob builder...... Advice from a cob builder...... 4 years ago Alan Cameron-Duff and Annabel Fawcus of Earthed travelled to the USA to take part in a natural building apprenticeship. As part of that apprenticeship they helped build a cob house in the temperate coastal rainforest of Oregon. They went on to California where they helped a single mother Madeleine Curtis to build a cob home for her and her young daughter Bianca. Along with fellow Brit Simon Holmes and local cob fanatic Rob Pollacek and a host of other helpers, Madeleine's cob house slowly took shape. The experience proved to be a catalyst for all those involved. Alan and Annabel returned to the UK to form Earthed, Simon built numerous other cob structures and became Madeleine's partner. Rob built cob fanatically and is now building his own cob mansion! On a recent visit to the UK Madeleine shared with us the following experiences and advice. See photos of Madeleine's house above and in the Photo Gallery. "As much as I'd love to say that as an "expert" cobber I have a few words of advice to hand down. It would be far more honest of me to start this way: I'd like to humbly offer a few hard earned and learned lessons that have been gifted to me over the years I've spent building our cob home. In this and truly in any other venture you undertake, the essence of my offering is to always follow your heart first, with the gut having equal say. I began my cob adventure with absolutely no experience building (other than sand castles and cardboard doll houses), almost no information about cob and very little money or materials. I was a single mother or a six year old girl with 5 acres of lovely raw land and a yurt (no electric or running water to the yurt!) I had, up tp the time that I began this flight of fancy lived in primarily urban environments in 'real' dwellings. What I did have in abundance was a clear and unswerving conviction based on a short article and a few pictures that I must live in a cob house, off the grid and powered by the sun. That conviction (combination of heart and gut knowing) head me steady through many trials along the way and with the help of many beautiful souls, we now live in a sun powered, rocket stove heated, grey water, compost toileted, cob cottage! That said, let me offer a few " maybe if I'd known I might have done a few things differently" kind of suggestions. First try and spend as much time on your site, preferably through all the seasons. Get to know the lay of the land: how does the water flow during heavy rains, from which direction do the storms generally blow, where is the best sun coming from (south obviously, however it is important to observe the Winter sun coming versus the Summer sun in terms of trees blocking potential solar gain). what plants grow where, who are your neighbours both human and non- human. Find your sacred spot on the land, perhaps create a small altar. Choose your house site based on these observations (never leaving heart and gut behind!), making sure your house is going to be taking full advantage of whatever sun you have, This is a very important consideration when building with cob. Find some people who have a lot of experience (or at least some!) building with cob and either take a hands on course with them or pick their brains extensively or better still, do both! Read a lot : ' A Pattern Language' by Christopher Alexander, 'Shelter' and 'Homework' by Lloyd Kahan, 'The Hand Sculpted House' by Evans, Smiley and Smith, to name but a few. Keep what feels right to you and put the rest aside, learning by doing is always my own personal choice, in spite of or maybe because of all the mistakes made! Create a flexible design for your house making sure to include vital essentials such as : storage, placement of lighting, optimal placement of heat source, flow into and out of the house. I would strongly suggest an entry way/ mud room; a place to remove muddy boots, hang up hats and rain gear and a bench to set down heavy carrier bags while you take off stuff. Build in storage shelves, etc, as cob is very amenable to this sort of design, this reduces the need for extra furniture thus increasing your floor space. When building a small cob home which most of us do, we want to enhance light, efficiency and a sense of spaciousness, well I do anyway! Honestly assessing your possesions and where you're going to put them before you build your house goes a long way toward supporting those 3 elements. I'm also a proponent of lofts and separate private spaces being included in the design particularly if there are 2 or more people living together. In the warm months of course we all spend loads of time in the big outdoors but come Winter the little cosy cottage can become the pit of doom if there aren't little (or big) nooks and lofts to retreat to. Again it's always good to be extremely honest with who you are and what your limits are when designing your space! Another place where being honest is of ultimate importance is the inclusion of those things that are really important to you. Say you've always wanted a really well kitted out kitchen with a lot of space for chopping vegetables and hanging out, then for Gods sake don't leave that out! You may build only one house for yourself, so put in the things you've always wished for, make them green and efficient,but include them. During the design part and afterwards another really important thing to be looking at is start collecting/ scrounging for materials; Search skips, building sights, reclamation yards for free and cheap bits and bobs. Find a wood that needs thinning for the round poles (of course ask for permission first!) There are also good international websites for barter and give away, e.g http://www.freecycle.org/, so check those out too. Finally ask for help and be grateful for all the abundance you receive. Say "Thank you" often! And help others achieve their dreams when you can, giving never costs anything and the returns are huge!! " Happy Cobbing! Love Madeleine xo Published Jul 14, 2005 - 01:12 PM