The ideas and techniques in this book have been developed and tested during the construction of at least 40 cob buildings in Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Ohio, Texas, Mexico, Denmark, Australia, and New Zealand. We hope you will use this guide for practical purposes. Build something, experiment, ask questions, push the known limits of the materials, systems, and techniques described herein. This book is intended as a companion to, rather than a substitute for, workshops and other hands-on learning. The housing industry is a major contributor to the problem.
Every material used in a typical modern building is the product of energy-intensive processing.
The mills which saw our lumber, the factories which make plywood and chipboard, the foundries which make steel, the plants which turn natural minerals into cement by subjecting them to enormous heat, all consume vast quantities of power, supplied either by the combustion of coal and oil, the damming of rivers, or the splitting of atoms. These manufacturing processes also release toxic effluent into the water and hazardous chemicals into the air. And even after our building materials are made, modern construction depends on an endless stream of polluting trucks to deliver them to us, usually from hundreds of miles away. Page 11 Of course, it's impossible to build a house with no environmental impact, but it's our responsibility to minimize and localize the damage. Digging a hole in your yard for clay to make a cob house may look ugly at first, but it's a lot less ugly than strip mines, giant factories and superhighways.