Building with Cob: A Step-by-step Guide: 1 book cover

Building with Cob: A Step-by-step Guide: 1

Author(s): Adam Weismann (Author), Katy Bryce (Author)

Publisher: Green Books (UK)
Publication Date: 15 Feb. 2006
Edition: First Edition
Language: English
Print length: 256 pages
ISBN-10: 1903998727
ISBN-13: 9781903998724

Book Description

This informative guide shows you all need to know on how to build and restore using cob techniques to create modern, environmentally friendly buildings.

The ancient method of cob building uses a simple mixture of clay sub-soil, aggregate, straw and water to create solid structural walls built without shuttering or forms, onto a stone plinth. Cob is now undergoing a renaissance as an ‘eco-friendly’ building material because of its amazing ‘green’ credentials.

Building with Cob provides step-by-step instructions on how to apply this ancient technique in a wide variety of contemporary situations, covering everything from design and siting, mixing, building walls, fireplaces, ovens and floors, lime and other natural finishes, and gaining planning permission and building regulation approval. Lavishly illustrated with more than 300 colour photos and 85 diagrams, it also provides detailed guidance on how to sensitively repair and restore old cob structures.

This handy guide is ideal for anyone interested in building or repairing using sustainable methods.

Editorial Reviews

Review

In my work teaching natural building I often found myself using cookery metaphors. Clay plasters needs to be mixed to a consistency of cookie dough, clay slip needs to be like a runny yoghurt rather than milk, a good final cob should be like a loaf of bread… people relate to this much more than technical lists of mixes. It gives natural building a familiarity and a resonance that clicks with people, in the same way that Jamie Oliver on telly knocking a 2 minute chocolate mousse together does. The modern cook book is a very different thing from a Mrs Beaton first edition. Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson; the books produced by these celebrity chefs are awash with gorgeous pictures of delicious meals, groovy chefs at work, they make good food beautiful, everyday and relevant. Building with Cob is the latest addition to the cobbers library, and in many ways it has the feel of one of these cookbooks. The authors and the publisher are really to be congratulated on producing such a sumptuous book, lavishly illustrated with photos of cob that looks good enough to eat, and delicious curvy organic-looking houses. Cob has an indefinable quality that sets it apart as a building material. There is something about its monolithic undulating and gentle walls that touches people deeply. Having built a few cob structures, I feel deeply connected to this most ancient and yet most modern of building materials. I often tell apprentice cobbers on courses that they have a cobbing gene, and that once they become familiar with working with cob, they will find they know how to do it. It is instinctual. Adam Weisman and Katy Price travelled to Oregon in the US and trained in cob building with Linda Smiley and Ianto Evans of the Cob Cottage Company, authors, along with Michael G. Smith of the classic book The Hand Sculpted House . On their return to the UK they set about promoting the idea here, and through the company they set up, Cob in Cornwall, they have done just that. They have built a number of beautiful structures around the UK, some of which appear in this book. Like The Handsculpted House , this book is deeply passionate about cob and its potential, but it focuses less on the personal transformative qualities of working with it, and more on the practicalities of building with it. The book covers the history of earth building and the scale of its use around the world. They look at choosing a site, working out if you have suitable soils, and making mixes. Unlike the Handsculpted House which holds that the purest way of mixing cob is by foot on tarpaulins, this book takes a much more pragmatic approach. They take no strong position as to which is the best approach, although they do argue quite strongly that mixing cob in a cement mixer is a non starter (it tends to form balls and the straw doesn t get mixed in…). Every stage of the process is documented, from foundations through wall-raising to roofs, in a style that is easy to read, engaging and beautifully illustrated. They don t shy away from the fact that it is very hard work. Building with cob is an extremely rewarding and fun process. Make no bones about it, it is very physically demanding work, and you will be sure to sleep well at night after a day of cobbing. The best way to build with cob is with a team of people that you really enjoy being with, and who are not afraid to get dirty . –Rob Hopkins www.transitionculture.org

About the Author

Adam Weismann & Katy Bryce work with lime and clay on a daily basis through their company, Clayworks. They learnt these skills through restoring ancient vernacular buildings in Cornwall, and then began to apply the traditional techniques and materials to contemporary ‘eco’ builds. They have a passionate belief in the power of using these natural materials to benefit the health and well being of people, buildings and the environment.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Building with cob

Name: Building with Cob: A Step-by-step Guide: 1
Author: Adam Weismann (Author), Katy Bryce (Author)
ISBN: 9781903998724

A Step-by-Step Guide

By Adam Weismann, Katy Bryce, Ray Main

Green Books Ltd

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

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Building with Cob: A Step-by-step Guide: 1