I came across something very interesting while following an organic gardening link. Totally free housing made of clay and sand and chopped straw. Some of you may have heard of it already (I could be a Johnny come lately on this) It's is called Cob housing. There are several training seminars in Oregon, Arkansas and Georgia - I intend to try to attend the one in Arkansas this fall. This is apparently a very old method of building long-lasting (some of them in Wales and England are several hundred years old) very stable houses. The pictures I saw were charming houses and very individual design inside and out. Most of them used scavenged doors and windows to come out with a totally free structure. If anyone has any experience with this, I would like to hear about it. Thanks Linda

-- Linda Al-Sangar (alsangal@brentwood-tn.org), June 22, 2001 Answers What is the URL of the site you saw?

-- Cathy<>< (trinityhealth@nativestar.net), June 22, 2001.

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http://www.northcoast.com/~tms/cob.html http://www.cntinet.net/~sequoia/ http://www.deatech.com/cobcottage/ http://www.kleiwerks.com/ Sorry I should have posted these with my original post.

-- Linda Al-Sangar (alsangal@brentwood-tn.org), June 22, 2001.

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Linda: I'd accept your statement if it were low-cost, rather than totally free. Today it is hard to even scrounge for material without it having some cost, such as the gas to go pick up otherwise free material. While it is called 'cob' construction, you are basically talking about standard abode construction. While I was in Croatia I saw several buildings on the street on which I was staying which were obviously built in this manner, and very likely dated back to the early 1800s from what I know about the history of the village.

In the local church and at the fire station there are shrines to St. Fallin (spelling?) the patron saint of firemen. Couldn't figure out why until I learned the original houses had thatched roofs. If one caught fire in a breeze, it could essentially burn down a block of more of houses.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), June 22, 2001.

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I've looked into cob construction a bit, and a friend of mine attended a hands-on workshop. It differs from adobe in that you place the mix right onto the wall being built, without making bricks or blocks first. It has to have large overhangs built into the roofs because it is NOT waterproof. It is not baked in any way. It is relatively fireproof, though, and the thick walls provide tremendous thermal mass and reasonable insulation. Many cob structures have built-in oven/warming benches of the same material. Another neat feature of cob is that it can be quite free-form, for some charming effects. You can find a way to spend money doing just about anything, but if you use salvaged and recycled materials, cob construction can be nearly free, in terms of money. However, it is A LOT of work, and that's gotta be worth something!

-- Laura Jensen (lrjensen@nwlink.com), June 24, 2001.

-- ducky (duxinarow@yahoo.com), June 26, 2001

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We have looked into the cob construction methods as well as other natural building methods. My husband has been in conventional construction for well over thirty years so changing his mindset to a more natural way of thinking has taken quite some doing. However, I have finally convinced him to give the cob methods a try and we will be starting construction very soon on a cob cottage and cob barn. I raise Polish Arabian horses. The cottage will be attached to the barn for easy access for feeding and caring for the horses. Wish us luck and I will keep everyone posted on our progress.

-- Charlotte Wheat (cwheat@pine-net.com), August 16, 2001.