life’s everyday adventures in an ecovillage, plus other intentional community, filmmaking, and random musings
Note: Please find all of my cob building related content at my new blog, The Year of Mud: Building a cob house. Thanks! See you there!
If you like what you see here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed, or you can subscribe by email. (See column to the right!) Thanks.
I’ve been dwelling on (pun sorta intended) my cob house designs for a little while now, making plenty of sketches and reading lots of different books. As of yesterday, I thought I was fairly settled on a basic design. The roof has been causing me the most anxiety, since that is where I have no experience in either design or construction. But anyway, I had a salon/discussion last night to talk about my plans and to get feedback. I’ve been talking to a few different folks already, but I wanted to have a group discussion to get additional ideas. As a result of that talk, I am no longer so attached to my original design, and today I am doing some re-thinking, especially in terms of the roof I had in mind.
Originally, my plans looked something like this.
It’s a small cob house, with an 11′x13′ interior, rounded corners, with an urbanite foundation and a living roof. The walls are projected to be about 18 inches thick. A 6′ wide porch is on the west side of the house.
The south-facing wall would feature a large sliding window, about 4-6 feet wide for solar gain. The entrance is positioned in the southeast corner. Smaller double hung windows rest in the east and west walls, with a tiny fixed window in the north. Along the west wall is a rocket stove connected to a 4′ wide heated cob bed and bench that wraps around the northwest.
Bookshelves would be cobbed directly into the walls. A three foot deep shelf would be positioned above the cob bed for storage.
So. I’m now rethinking these basic plans a bit after learning about reciprocal roofs and seeing this incredible woodland home design. Originally, I kept debating between using standard dimensional lumber or pole wood for the roof construction. I was leaning towards dimensional lumber since I figured it would be easier to work with, and it would keep the living roof design more uniform and easier to build. However, I did not like the idea of depending on milled lumber. I thought it would be much nicer to find wood poles here on the land and incorporate them into the building instead. But I was intimidated by the prospect of using lots of uneven pieces of wood. How would that complicate the living roof?
However, after talking with Mark of Red Earth Farms I became inspired by the reciprocal roof design, which could easily be made using pole wood. I even made a couple smaller scale reciprocal roof models using chopsticks and oak wood scraps. After doing some web browsing, I have seen a number of photos of natural homes with reciprocal living roofs. Additionally, I am just starting to overcome my fear of a lack of familiarity with some of the construction process. Why should I worry? This is all one great big learning experience. If I really want to learn, I might as well design the cottage the way I really envision it. Take the bull by the horns.
Now I am starting to reformulate my design to incorporate a reciprocal roof, and a slightly different building shape. The basic layout will be similar, but I think this potential second iteration will have a more unique design. We shall see.
UPDATE (7/21): See building with cob on the Tiny House Blog for a feature on my cob house in progress!
One thing I like about the social life here is the range of activities you might find yourself doing with other folks. Playing board games, stargazing, and sitting around a campfire are some of the more ordinary ways to spend time at night. But there are always those special nights when a more unique social event is scheduled.
A few weeks ago, while playing a game of Sequence, several of us remarked just how cheesy and stereotypical most pictures on game board boxes are. That prompted the idea of making our own photos to paste on the game boxes, and my friend Liat announced the activity at our weekly meeting last Sunday. A large group of us spent a couple hours posing with different games and making our own funny/cheesy/ridiculous pictures one Friday night. Here’s my favorite:
Don’t mind the errors of the past two days. Back to normal here.
Here’s a great little video (apparently a teaser for a documentary that’s been in the making) about cob design and building, “The House as Living Sculpture”. It has a lot of nice footage of cob homes and the construction process. Check it out:
I’m very excited by the prospect of building my own cob cottage. I have been hesitant to commit myself to this idea over the winter, but I’ve finally put my foot down and made it an official goal of mine. Ideally, I would like to build a small cob house by the end of this year.
Last year, I had the opportunity to work with Ironweed on their cob kitchen for three months. I also helped my friend Dan with construction on his urbanite foundation, and doing light clay straw insulation on his second house. I’ve done bits of other natural building work around the community as well. Having experienced all that, I felt much more confident in my own skills and abilities, but I was still daunted by the prospect of heading my own building project. But I realized I do indeed value natural building skills quite highly, and it’s all a great big learning process. Even if I don’t have all the skills I need to build a house at this moment in time, there’s absolutely no reason that that should stop me. I am looking forward to the prospect of starting a project from the group up (literally) and learning simultaneously.
The plan, in short, is to construct a small house of cob, perhaps 11′x13′, slightly rounded, a single storied building with a living roof, a rocket stove (for heat) connected to a heated cob bed, with large south-facing windows (to take advantage of solar gain), and with an urbanite foundation. I have spent a bit of time thus far making scale sketches, designs, and floor plans. I am fairly confident that I am on the right track, although I do not have every detail in place.
The other day, I decided to give the Cob Cottage Company a phone call with a couple of construction questions I had. (They don’t do e-mail.) Ianto Evans, co-founder of the group answered the phone, and readily answered my questions. Because one of my questions was a bit complicated, he suggested I call back at a specific time later in the day. I was taken aback that he was so willing to accommodate me and answer my questions. Later, on the phone again, he was incredibly friendly and willing to talk to me about my plans. I was able to share some of my ideas about my overall design, and he listened intently and gave me feedback. He was so willing to talk about cob and building, and we eventually got into a deeper discussion about building, doing workshops, etc. Here was the author of the book I had been studying intently for several months, totally willing to help me in my own pursuits. Overall, it was an incredibly rewarding experience. I’ll admit it was like being star-struck.
Anyway, I’ll be sure to update more about this adventure as time goes on…
The latest episode of Dancing Rabbit TV is finally up and ready. I’m very curious to see what kind of feedback I get for this one. It’s called “Life with Thomas” and focuses on Thomas, a five year member here at Dancing Rabbit. He has some unique living habits and a quirky sense of humor. He’s a friend of all and very knowledgeable about local ecology, plant life, and well, pretty much most things.
The reason I’m curious to see how this plays with other people is that this is the first truly personal DRTV video, and I wonder if folks totally unfamiliar with Dancing Rabbit will be intrigued, confused, or even disinterested in this individual and his purely unique musings.
I guess there is only one way to find out.
The video comes in two parts.
Part 1
Part 2
Lack of updates here lately, yes. Power has been a bit low this week, preventing any extended computer usage. However, I was able to finish the latest episode of Dancing Rabbit TV last weekend, before a stretch of long, cloudy days. Unfortunately, I must re-render the video before I make it available on YouTube and Revver, which means I need to wait it out until the next sunny day, probably not for another day or two.
Relationship to energy and power (electricity, that is) is a defining element of everyday life here, especially during winter. It may seem obvious to say that you become much more aware of your power usage living here at DR, but it’s worth stating nevertheless. Even when there is enough power to use the lights in the grain bin, for example, I usually go for lighting a candle or two first.
Anyway, this latest DRTV video has been one of the most enjoyable ones to edit. It’s more personal than the first four, and more of an actual documentary. I would not classify the others as “short documentaries”, but this one, I might. That makes me happy, in a way.
Other than that, the past few weeks have been filled with meetings (our annual retreat, which was comprised of six days straight of meetings, was two weeks ago), reading books, knitting, and making little house sketches and designs. (More on that another time.)
So it goes.
The Year of Mud: Building a cob house Green Options: Posts by Brian Liloia