Categories: Design

Building your own bioclimatic home from earth and straw

With very little instruction, anyone can build their own home, or so argues natural building expert Michael G. Smith. Since the early nineties, he’s been teaching people to do just that with natural materials like cob and straw bale and he says it’s quite simple.

“If you want to build for yourself, if you actually want to take the time to do the work for yourself, these techniques are very very simple to learn. Cob especially, we teach week-long cob workshops and at the end of that, people with no previous building experience at all know what they need to know to build the cob parts of the house.”

In this video, Smith shows us the natural homes (from cob, straw bale, clay wattle and slip straw) at the Emerald Earth Sanctuary, an intentional community in Mendocino, California where he currently lives and teaches. He explains how since earth homes require less investment in materials, they require more investment in labor, which means to build this way we will need to change the way we live and work.

On *faircompanies: http://faircompanies.com/videos/view/build-your-own-home-from-earth-and-straw/

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View Comments

  • I want to build a cob house and i do not know how. Thank you..grandma bowling

  • i agree with dude. more and more people are choosing to take control of their lives by voluntarily downsizing. some not so voluntary lol. however youtube is great for teaching people how to do without the corporatocracy. So far there is no way to monetize or tax my personal labor for my own benefit. A maker society puts government and corporations back in their place lol

  • Hmmm... rocks as foundation and wood framing... this is very stupid, the house is very fragile. Whole earth houses, when they dry, act as as a single unit, giving incredible resistance, including to tornadoes and earthquakes. Mixing with American building techniques, splitting earth walls into simple slots between framing is a very bad and wrong idea. Also walls must have 60-80 cm width in order to self sustain their own weight and give portability to 2nd floor.

  • Can you put metal lath against the straw or do you need burlap between the straw and metal lath if you choose to plaster over metal lath?

  • okay not gonna make fun of your voice but you used a poor choice in music. It makes you not only sound like youre about to cry but solidifies it. Itd be fine without the music

  • Evey one cry I like building with the earth. What else you going to build with things from other plants I've built almost everything. Building it is not the problem the problem starts when government groups come out and tell where is your 100 permits. Who is the architect, draftsman, etc, I always what to be smart and reply are those men coming coming out to drive nails and put roofing roofing on for free. . Now this is a mess you pay groups to tell you how to build the house your going to live in. Let me be quite no one wants to hear it, so keep paying and keep praying

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