Gillian Owens

I am going to be building my cob home within the next few months. I just got the land, we are clearing out the spot, and working on blueprints. My fiancé just can't bring himself to be content with curved walls. He says he can deal with it in some areas but not for the entire structure. Is it absolutely a REQUIREMENT for a cob house to have curved walls? I am seeing pictures on Google images of old English homes that are cob, and most of them appear to have straight walls. These are large homes as well. My fiancé has a lot of experience in building houses the traditional way and this will be his first cob home, mine as well. The only problem we have with cob is it being round. I have been researching websites to see if someone will explain why cob is round. Becky Bee in her book touches on it. But I am thinking if a home has a great foundation and sturdy form, with roof going up before cob walls, then would they still have to be round?

From all I am reading it seems that any method I use is going to be labor intensive. Good way to get fit and these extra few pounds off me lol! I'm thinking of using all this rock to build my walls up 3-4 ft of fieldstone and cob up from there. I know that you build cob on top of a rock stem wall, so why not start it from 3ft upwards? It will get quite a bit of that rock out of the way and give my home a great amount of strength. Maybe a couple of stone fireplaces as well. Everyone thinks I'm nuts. I'm 35, my sister 40, (both 5'3") and that's it for help unless you count my 9 year old little boy. I doubt I'll work him very hard I have no savings and no experience. I have willpower and land. I can little by little buy tools. The first thing I'll build is a shed to store all my tools in. It will give me some practice building and if I start whining at a shed then I'll know to stop right there. I doubt that will happen though. When you don't have a large income but you have a lot of will and absorb info like a sponge there is no reason to not use it. I could have a gorgeous home and never rent again. This website is very inspiring.
I am going to have to learn to deal with these snakes though...shew!

Jay, I'm about 2 hours away from there near Tennessee. I have a little over 3 acres of land of my own but I can use up to 15. My family has it sectioned off to different members but I'm welcome to whatever. For the actual house I am not interested in a tiny cottage. More like the larger cob homes you'd find in England. No one around here has even heard of cob, much less tried it. My land is far enough away from others and I won't have any trouble. I do not need a permit for what I'm doing. I'm so lucky.

Thank you for replying! Miles, I am going to build a house, and not a very small one either, so I'll need a lot of whatever I end up using. It will also have a greenhouse. I haven't done the jar test as of yet. I will try to drive out there today and do it. I didn't know I could build a house out of rock.....?....hmmmm....
Leila, there's is a river that isn't too far away. I wonder if I need permission. Things are so informal and "backward" out in this part of the world . I may end up with a shovel and a pick up truck by the river bank.

Thank you both!

I've read on cobbing until I can't sleep without dreaming of it, almost 4 years. I've watched YouTube videos and downloaded handbooks. Yet still I am in a brain fog... I have some land to start building on that has been passed on through generations in my family. I've had so many complaints about how hard it is to garden there. The ground is full of rocks. The soil isn't very rich. I'm in southeastern Kentucky on a mountain that was an old coal mining strip job. Gorgeous place but rocks everywhere. I see that I can get some sand off the bank of the mountain, and I'll have no shortage of stone and rubble. But I don't want to get into heavy expenses by importing a bunch of soil for clay. There is a pond a few acres away that may have some better soil, I'm not sure. But if I couldn't get to it is there a way for me to add something to this dry unappealing dirt to help it form cob? Like maybe manure? Or maybe I am just a clueless newbie and don't know where to look for correct soil or what I am doing lol! Someone out there please help me This is going to be an epic job for two sisters.