Cob Workshop 2007

This August the Lightwork Ecovillage hosted a 7 day Cob Building Workshop. Jim Traynor was the Cob expert on site and taught the participants valuable information on sustainable building.

Cobbing began early the first morning. Krista is shoveling clay into buckets to prepare it for clay meditations, a process of breaking large chunks of clay down into small pieces by hand and soaking the clay in water.

Subsoil is screened and then used in the cob mix.

The sand is the 3rd ingredient in cob. The sand, soil and clay are all found on the Ecovillage land.

This is Tao's first clay meditation.

The clay needs human touch to help align the platelets, otherwise the mixture may not turn into cob.

Keith and Julia bonding over a clay meditation. This is a relaxing job on the building site.

Jeanine is hammering nails into the ends of small stripped logs. The logs are put into the walls and help with insulation. The nails allow the cob to hold onto the wood.

The first batch is in process. Mixing the clay, sand and soil together. It is a great pressure point foot massage.

Jim gets very enthusiastic about cob! Here he is setting an anchor in place. The anchor attaches the north straw bale wall to the cob making it very strong.

This wall has been sitting dormant for awhile, the Julia's are pouring water on it to soften up the top layer of cob to make it receptive to the new layer thereby integrating the new layer with the old to create one uniform strong wall.

Julia T. making cob balls!

Jim is breaking down the dry clay, this makes the clay meditations easier.

Miming? No! - The first window is installed! This window is single paned to allow more opportunity for passive solar heating.

Cob! Cob! Cob! The dimples on the side of the cob wall make it easier for the plaster (the finishing layer) to affix to the cob.

Scott built and installed lintels. This helps strengthen the walls and supports the cob over the doorways and windows.

Happy Cobbers.

Another lintel.

And the third doorway has a lintel too!

The crew learned quickly the cob dries at different speeds and can crack glass. This happened to the window. Jim showed that creative means can be taken to save the installed glass like creating a cob design and cobbing the design in with a plaster mix of cob. He drew this design on the window with clay as one possible option.