Hello, I'm fairly new to cob, but have been researching it for a few months now. I'm in the "sketching it out" stages of designing my house, and I'm in need of advise. It will be me and my sister living together. We are both fairly young, and want to build it with enough space for growing in the future. We've come to the conclusion that a 2 story house will probably be the best way to go, as it will give us ample room to spread out, yet will still be fairly "easy" to do, rather than a duplex or two completely separate buildings. We get along well and are confident in it working out long term.
We were originally going to research cob (I've purchased the best books I could find) then buy land and go to a workshop at the next available date. We will probably buy land late this year or early next year, because the value is rising so even if we end up not building we gain profit. The only problem is that we've noticed the price of workshops (900$ per person! ) and are wondering if they would even be necessary. I'm 90% certain that cob is legal in the area, northern nevada, as the was a cob house workshop in reno in 2012, but we will go to the city hall to talk code with someone when we get closer to actually building.
Basically, we were wondering if workshops are worth the cost, how to build a second floor safely (or if we should hire someone to), should we hire someone to do the more dangerous construction (roofing/electric/etc), what does a desert climate call for with cob? Thanks for the read, we are still in the VERY early stages, we probably won't start building until next year.
