Building with cob

A Step-by-Step Guide

By Adam Weismann, Katy Bryce, Ray Main

Green Books Ltd

Copyright © 2010 Adam Weismann and Katy Bryce
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-903998-72-4

Contents

Introduction,
1 Earth building around the world,
2 Site & design,
3 Identifying & testing soils,
4 How to make a cob mix,
5 Foundations,
6 Building with cob,
7 Roofs,
8 Insulation,
9 Lime & other natural finishes,
10 Earthen floors,
11 Cob fireplaces & earthen ovens,
12 Restoration,
13 Planning permission & building regulations,
About the authors,
Resources & Suppliers,
Index,

CHAPTER 1

Earth building around the world

Vernacular buildings record lifestyles of the past, when people had to find a sustainable way of life or perish. Just as we will have to now. The new importance of vernacular building is that it has vital ecological lessons for today.

David Pearson, Earth & Spirit

vernacular traditions and natural building

Mud has been used to create dwellings and structures since human beings first created shelter 10,000 years ago. It can be found in the simple shelters made of woven sticks covered in clay, the remains of which were discovered on the Nile Delta in Africa from 5,000 BC, to the rammed earth sections of the great wall of China, the majestic mud brick mosques of Djenne and Mopti in Mali, and the humble cob cottages of the British Isles. And before this, humans must have watched and learned from the swallows who weave their nests out of twigs held together by mud, and the termites who create huge mounds out of particles of earth piled delicately on top of each other.

The people making these buildings were (and in some societies continue to be) the children, women and men of the rural communities around the world. They were also the finest craftspeople of the world's most ancient civilisations, as well as the peasant tenant farmers of pre-industrial Europe. Mud has always been, and continues to be, the most available, democratic and adaptive building material on the planet.

Vernacular building practices around the world

"Quietly and almost without notice, they outwit the might of modern machinery with simple tools and materials that welcome, encourage, and amplify the use of the human hand." Bill and Athena Steen and Eiko Komatsu, Built By Hand: Vernacular Buildings Around the World.

Earth has predominantly been used for building by the indigenous peoples of the world, who live in pre-industrial societies, who work and live off of the land, and have little or no access to our so-called 'modern' technologies. Vernacular building techniques are used for the homes of ordinary people.

They are designed and built by the people who live in them, using the natural resources available locally, and using simple hand tools and a low-tech approach. They are designed to respond intimately to the local site on which they are built, and serve as an expression of the community's and the individual's cultural and social human needs. As Hughes and North said in 1908, regarding the vernacular buildings of Wales: "Just as the many-branched Welsh oaks are peculiar to the principality, so are these buildings the natural product of the country, the true growth as it were of the soil, and show as clearly as any written history the development of the life of the people." – Eurwyn William, Home-made Homes: Dwellings of the rural poor in Wales.

Vernacular buildings can be thought of