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What is a COB?

Cob is a structural composite of earth, clay, straw, sand and water that is hand-sculpted into wall decorations. shelters or houses. With cob you can also create beautiful wall-sculptures, to achieve various interior design effects, you can build ovens, you can build garden walls.... The possibilities are endless!

Cob as building material is is non-toxic, non-polluting, 100 percent recyclable and biodegradable.

It is one of the oldest, safest and most eco-friendly materials for building. If mixed carefully, well-maintained and adequately protected from moisture - it can last for many centuries.

Cob is common material in whole Europe (majority of traditional houses are build on that way), especially in Great Britain - there are still many very old cob houses around - like few centuries old....

Earthen materials (cob, adobe) are also very popular in the Africa, Asia...

Cob buildings have extremely positive energy, one really get healed while living in such house. During the summer, inside is cool, during the winter pleasently warm.

Building such country home or weekend house is cheap and fun, one feels free like child playing with mud while being at the same time the most responsible builder and artist (sculptor) at the same time. When you can shape your own home with your own hands - believe me there is no better feeling then that.

Cob is great material because you can use it in already finished buidings, of any kind: it can be later applied on any type of inside or outside walls to insulate them, decorate them, or make them healtier.

Building with cob - earthen materials is part of many ecological houses - you use layers of cob in building the Earthship (pls check my article),Cordwood Houses, Strawball Houses, Adobe Houses... and yes, with the help of the nails you can apply it on any other wall surface !

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I tested this way of building when I bought my weekend house several years ago: over 100 years old village house was made from cob. Altough nobody took care about if for 30 years before I bought it, cob walls were unbelievable hard, stable and majority of them in reasonably good condition, despite the fact that roof was in very bad state etc.

Well, fixing such old house (which was not build as it should be from the very benning) is long story on it´s own so I will not mention all challenges which my ex and me faced for 4 years living there (this subject deserves special Hub, or better saying - whole book). I do not complain, because while finding simple solutions to repair all structural damages on that house, I learned about building much more that I would ever learn in any other situation. There were only two of us doing this job (4 hands, 1 brain - mine), altough we had several times a little help from friends (often this help was more contraproductive then useful, he, he).

The walls of the house were far too thin for any building material (low thermal mass) so we used cob again (inside and outside) to make them thick enough and to sculpture them on very nice ways, so that house gradually became very pleasant place for living. Building with cob was very fun, interesting and successful experiment which brought excellent results at the end.

As I mentioned before, cob houses are very pleasently cool during the summer and warm during the winter, and all this earthen-materials assure excellent healing energy.

Of couse, in colder climate, where there is a lot of rain and winds, combination of classical and modern materials should be used in building in order to achieve the best and most permanent results.

In 4 years I became expert in various ways of building with cob, because my ex boyfriend and me tested various combinations of earthen materials, dependig on place where we were using them.

Did I like the cob building? Yes, of course! I simply adore it, and ,if needed,  I would today start it again: digg the soil, cut the straw, add to the clay all needed ingredients (straw, water, sand or lime), mix that, and start building, sculpting, carving... It is one of the most pleasant jobs I ever done in my life.

Well, your hands must get dirty (not only the hands), but it is such pleasure when adult people start playing in mud... Whenever building I just could not stop singing: my heart and soul were full of joy. Contact with Earth always heals and make happy.

I did not take a lot of photos while doing that, only few: I did not have my own digital camera then, plus I was to busy to even think about taking photos, so I will share these few I have: these are taken before all what is on them was finished.

I would never recommend to anyone to renovate any too old house (especially if sctructual damage is very big), it is much better and easier if you build from the very beginning, or if you just renovate your present place for living.

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When we bought the house, main living room had cob floor (we applied concrete afterwards, because house was build without foundation ) and to thin cob walls, and very damaged oak planks on the beams of ceiling. We had to fix the walls, remove all damaged planks (put 1 inch thick chipboard instead , which I painted and protected from moisture). Later on, we insulate them with layers of straw from above on what we put thin layer of concrete in the attick.

After we winished fixing the walls, winter came, and I fully understood full meaning of importance of thermal mass which was on old house far from sufficient - walls were only 8-9 inches thick. People love to build too thin walls even with bricks, so during the winter have to use too much energy to heat the house up. In the springtime, we applied additional layers of cob, on outside and inside walls plus additionaly insulate them - this is area where winter winds are strong and cold.

Thickness of the outside cob walls, if not additionally insulated should be 50 cm (19 - 20 inches), actually this is ideal thermall mass for any brick house as well . Insulation is adding thermal mass and saving heating energy.

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Old extension of the house made from bricks was completely damaged in 30 years of non-using. Roof was also destroyed. You can see that on the left. This was me sitting next to the bricks.

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We fixed roof, repaired extension with bricks again, and applied cob on the walls to get bigger thermal mass...and nice decoration.

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These walls originally did not have any windows: so we cut the walls put windows and fix them with the cob. On that way, in kitchen was finally enough of light.

When I had the time, (what was usually in the evening), I used lamp to sculpture on the walls. The photo is taken when my "artwork" was not completely finished....

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This is photo of, at that time, unfinished cob mural in the living room, next to fire place. I live very far from my weekend house now, in another part of country, so at this moment, cannot take new photos. When was completely finished, mural was very charming.

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Cob buildings have very warm atmosphere and are very pleasant: you can get inpired with the following video of some other cob- houses.

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Building with cob assures endless possibility of unique designing of the house: I am presenting here few cob houses built around the world :

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Cob is the best possible material for interior design, but i will write more about sculpting the walls in some other Hub.

Here are just few examples, possibilities are really endless:

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Some ideas about building with cob you can get while watching the video on the bottom. Altough even children can do it, and they really like to help adults in such building projects, building itself requires some basic knowledge, theoretical or practical. The best is to start with proper foundation and small stone or brick walls before starting to build cob-walls.

Cob building is extremely inspirative way of building, when you start, you actually know what you need to do the next. I suppose we have the knowledge of building with earthen materials in our genes...

I hope I inspired you to test it !

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