Incredible Cob! Complete Shelter Workshop
Date: May 22 – 30
Workshops start with Saturday dinner and ends after lunch on Sunday.
Location: House Alive Homestead, Jacksonville, OR
Instructor: Coenraad Rogmans
Cost: $825. All meals and camping provided.
Curriculum
Daily Schedule
About The Site
What to Bring
Register for a Workshop
About Bringing Children
General outline of the workshop
This workshop offers an incredibly rich learning experience that has made it our most popular for the last 5 years. During the workshop you will develop the confidence, knowledge and skills to design and build your own natural building and sustainable living project. This workshop is for you if you are interested in building your own natural cottage, want to use natural materials in you present house in the form of a “natural renovation”, or are looking to make some lifestyle changes.
House Alive workshops focus on “learning by doing;” be prepared to do a lot of building. Constructing a house takes determination and sustained physical activity. We believe building your own house can be possible for anyone and teach “democratic building” techniques: Simplicity of design, building in community, using simple hand tools, taking care of our bodies, and extreme affordability to free ourselves from debt. But you don’t have to build your own home to employ these techniques. You can improve the beauty, comfort, and affordability of any living space by employing “Natural renovation” techniques or using “appropriate technologies.”
We will focus much of our hands-on time on building with cob. Cob is often considered the “mother” of all natural building techniques. It has been around for millennia, is practiced worldwide, and the materials can be locally harvested. Cob doesn’t rot or burn and offers great flexibility to shape spaces to fit our lives. You will learn how to find materials, mix them into cob material and build strong, beautiful walls. You also will learn how to deal with foundations and roofs, how to put in windows, doors, plumbing and electricity, how to easily add arches, niches, and other sculptural features, and how to finish buildings with earthen floors and plasters. Afternoons and evenings will include lectures and demonstrations on a wide variety of natural building and appropriate technology topics (see curriculum). Over the course of the workshop you will learn how to easily integrate various forms of natural construction, such as straw bale, light-straw-clay, adobe brick, natural plasters and floors, round wood, and more.
During the mornings, we will be constructing our cob cottage, where participants learn the following:
- Making cob by foot
- Body mechanics
- Rubble trench foundations
- Stem walls out of recycled concrete (”urbanite”), earth bags, and stone
- Natural sub-floors for earthen floors
- The materials sand, straw, and clay: How they work, what to look for, where to find them
- Wall building: tapering, keeping it plumb, trimming, shaping
- Electricity: How to put in wires, how to build a circuit
- Plumbing: Water and gray water systems
- Windows, doors and hanging cabinets and other things on cob walls
- Hybrid buildings: The interfaces of cob with other materials
- Earthen floors
- Earthen finish plasters.
The afternoon curriculum will include less building and more lectures and demonstrations:
- The economy of building
- Passive solar design
- Natural design
- Simple and inexpensive composting toilets
- Simple and inexpensive solar hot water systems
- “Stand-alone” small solar electricity systems
- Codes, hybrid buildings and natural renovations
- Straw bale construction
- Light straw clay, adobe brick and waddle and daub
- Roofs and roof insulation
- Simple living and community, how to get started.
In addition to these topics, we will present you with multiple slide presentations to explain technical concepts as well as familiarize you with our previous projects around the world and the greater community of natural building. Believe it or not, there will also be time for taking afternoon naps, singing and an occasional walk in the woods.
Here is a basic idea of the daily schedule, which changes regularly, depending on the weather, the progress on the building site and the topics of discussion:
- First thing — light snack, coffee, tea, juice
- Then: morning cob mixing
- Breakfast
- Cob construction and curriculum
- Lunch and afternoon nap time
- Afternoon presentation #1
- Snack and afternoon presentation #2
- Dinner
Evening programs will vary, depending on people’s energy. Sometimes we just hang out and socialize, other times there will be slide shows and/or short discussions.
The temperature in the summer in South Dakota can be moderate to hot and an occasional rainstorm is not unusual. Please make sure you bring the following items:
- Tent
- Sleeping bag/pad, pillow, towel
- Enough clothing to last for the workshop (clothing will get dirty, small hand-washings mid-week are possible)
- Protection from the sun (hats, sunscreen, etc.)
- Water bottle
- Pictures, drawings, plans, ideas, questions
- A 6? x 8? woven polypropalene (”blue”) tarp for mixing cob. Larger is fine, but will have to be cut to size.
- Lotion or cream for dry hands and feet
- Work gloves. We like the cloth ones with rubberized palms (One brand is called “Atlas”).
- Musical instruments
- For sensitive feet (optional): An old pair of sneakers, duct tape or diving booties. We will be mixing cob by foot. To toughen up your feet a little, we highly recommend that you walk bare foot as much as possible before the workshop starts.
About the site
This workshop will be held on our homestead near Jacksonville, OR. There are several natural buildings as well as a beautiful garden, composting toilets and many different solar technologies. The setting is a serene pine and doug-fir forest in the mountains of Southern Oregon, just 30 minutes away from both the Medford airport and Ashland, and 15 minutes from the historic town of Jacksonville. Camping on site is provided along with delicious vegetarian meals (vegan options available), with lots of produce from our own garden. People need to provide their own tent/bedding. In May/June, the weather can fluctuate widely, with temperatures varying between 45 at night and and 75 during the day. Rain is possible this time of year. Click here to read more about our homestead.
To secure your spot in this workshop, go to the registration page and follow the simple instructions. We require a $200 non-refundable deposit per person, which can be paid with a check or money order. The balance is due at the time of the workshop and can be paid on site in cash or with a check or money-order. Once we receive your deposit we will send you more information about how to get to the site and how to prepare for your arrival. Register now!
Almost without exception, children and youth have enjoyed being a part of our workshops. Our youngest participant was 6 months old at the time! Depending on their age and interest, kids build, listen and observe, play with the sand and clay, read, etc. They often also team up with other kids on the homestead. We see a lot of good in exposing your children to natural building and community living and like to think that we can make a difference in the way they see life. This is also a great way to enjoy the workshop as a family and to prepare your family for being at a building site together. Needless to say that you will lose some workshop time while you are attending to the needs of your child; We can not provide day care for you. The cost for children is: 0- 4 years old: Free (we are counting on you bringing breast milk and or baby food) 4 – 12 years old: $20 per day (just covering our food and infrastructure cost) 13 – 17 years old: half price. These prices may not apply to all workshops. Please check with us in order to make special arrangements. We want to make it possible for you!