For a long time I have wanted to try mixing cob with a cement mixer but never had the opportunity. But today I was helping a friend render his wall with Adobe in a stone house and as he had a cement mixer there and I was tired I offered to try to mix it…
Category: Build a Cob House
How to make a Tough, Consistent Colour Clay Paint
Here we will go in to detail about how we made a natural paint for a clay wall. Using only clay, water, sugar and flour.
How we made our Cob Floor
We have just about finished our cob floor and it looks and feels beautiful. As such I thought it necessary to start the blog post about how we did it. It was a lot of work but the techniques weren’t all that difficult. Here we go First up level the places in your home that…
Hang pictures on a cob/stone wall
Hanging things on walls built with natural materials generally requires different techniques from a modern build, and sometimes a bit of pre-planning. We are at the stage of our build where we are rendering the walls with cob and we know the layout of the rooms. As such, we are comfortable to start deciding where…
Make window frames with re-used train track sleepers
Old train track sleepers are really heavy, really strong, and using them can ease your conscience as you are not cutting down new trees to build your house. They are however likely to have been pressure treated with seriously dangerous chemicals which keeps them strong for a long time but makes them pretty toxic especially…
Electric pipes in a cob house
You can wait till you have built your cob house to install your electric pipes. This gives you a bit more freedom to place them once you have more of a feel for the room, but it means cutting out channels of rock hard cob, which is not easy, and then re-cobbing over them to…
How to build with cob
Building with cob is really easy. Anyone can learn in a few minutes and it just takes a bit of guidance as you go up the wall to make sure everything is on track. First up, for your first layer you are going to need a bucket of clay slip. This is made with filtered…
How to make Cob with a tractor
A good cob is made from 70-85% coarse sand (not beach sand) and 15-30% clay. If you are building a big house, or need to build quickly, then you may consider making your cob with a tractor rather than by foot. I have not made cob by foot whilst making a full house but I…
Make cob by foot
Making cob by foot is really easy. If you have a tarp and spades that is preferable but not essential. Firstly get your sand and clay ready. A good cob is made from between 70-85% sand and 15-30% clay with long straw or other available fibre, and water. Mix you clay and sand together till…
Mediterranean Permaculture 