The First Consultation

     Yesterday was a good day.  Christina Ott, Cob-Builder/Consultant, made a trip our way yesterday.  She is a wealth of cob knowledge!  She studied natural building, conducts workshops, and recently was a presenter at a national "green" convention.  She amazed me with the way she easily answered all our questions and could readily talk numbers with our local building inspector.  This lady knows her stuff!  (Check her out at www.barefootbuilder.com.)
     I stumbled across Christina while casually searching cob on the internet.  (It seems like I have done a lot of stumbling lately- but with a wonderful outcome!)  To my disbelief, there was a live person, in Tennessee, that is an instructor on this topic!  We signed up for a weekend workshop and ended up coming for a kind of one-day independent study.  (Piece of phone conversation with Christina:  Me, "Do you live in a cob house?"  Christina, "Yes, I'm sitting in it now."  Me, huge smile.)  We plan to have her involved as our project moves through phases.  The first phase being the foundation, which is what we mostly discussed during this visit. 
     Cob, for those of you who aren't familiar with the term (I wasn't!), is a mixture of clay, sand, and straw.  It is similar to adobe (yes, I know, adobe is typically seen in dry climates and we aren't. The key is a good "hat and boots"- large roof overhang and a foundation with an excellent drainage system.)  Definitely nothing new in the world of building.   In Europe, beautiful cob home are still lived in today that are 500+ years old.  Cob is a very efficient material, cool in the summer and warm in the winter.  It's also very green and not to mention beautiful.  The curves.  The custom built-ins.  The little nooks and crannies.  (Pinterest has a lot of cool cob pics.)  It's just not common around here.  (Am I am no expert, thankfully there is a lot of information readily avaible online and some very resourceful books.)  
     We discussed our house plans, with only a few minor, minor tweaks.  The lot is almost ideal, coverage all around except for the south- perfect for passive solar.  The site has a little slope, but nothing some minor leveling won't fix.  Ready.
     We plan to begin the foundation next month.  This will consist of leveling the home site and digging a trench for the foundation, and then the building of it.  The trench will line our home and will be approximately three feet deep and 24' wide.  A perforated drain pipe will go in the bottom, followed by two feet of gravel.  Then a one foot concrete footer (to meet building code) will be poured up to grade.  Then lots of rock.  The rock foundation will be about 22" wide and 16+ inches tall.  Christina estimated needing about one and 1/2 dump truck loads of rock to meet our need.  (Many cob homes are small, only a couple of hundred square feet.  Our land restricts a home less than 1200 square feet, so we are building slightly over- but trying to keep it as small as possible.)  
     It sounds daunting when all of the steps are broken down.  Our goal is to build our foundation through the fall and winter, and begin the cobbing in the spring.  Lord, please send the rock our way.  I know He will provide!  Hopefully, my next post will include a groundbreaking! 
     Until then...   
     <><

Up until now...

     This is the beginning of something special. A turning point for my little family. My husband, Arab (a nickname of no meaning), and I will soon embark upon the building of our forever home. With our hands. Out of dirt. I think a lot of people think we are crazy.

     We have a typical little nuclear family: Dad, Mom (that's me), Daughter (Manna, almost 3), Son (Moses, just turned 1. Mo is blind, ok, I guess that's not very typical). Arab owns a roofing business. I had worked as a school counselor until a few months before the arrival of our son (Mo's blindness had nothing to do with my decision to become a stay-at-home mother, we actually didn't know that he was blind until he was a few months old). We had a typical little home life too, a mortgage, paying lots of bills and outsourcing practically everything. Don't get me wrong, we loved our house. It charmed us away from our hometown with its rustic nostalgia.

     After only a few short years, we realized this wasn't our forever home. We missed our tiny hometown and wanted to be closer to family (even though we weren't that far away). Finding out about Mo's blindness made my urge to be near family even stronger; I wanted my children to have a close-knit support system. That is now in the works.

     Two months ago, we were blessed with the selling of our first home. That rustic house we fell in love with. ("I can't believe we own this house!" I remember saying to Arab with delight as we slept in our living room floor. Our first night in our first home. Just us.)

     Let's backtrack some...

     In the spring, we purchased land. Five little acres on a sloping hillside. A nice clearing. Lots of beautiful trees. A trickling creek. Oh, and the neighbors... My parents (Mom and Stepfather) and one-year-old niece live right across the road (I would say street, but it's not really a street- there are no lines or anything). My stepbrother, his wife, and their two children (who just happen to be exactly the same age as mine) purchased the land directly beside us a few months before. Family unit, here we come.

     When we first purchased this land, in the country of a rural county in Tennessee, we were thinking cabin. I am the researcher and had been doing the research. Yes, for sure a cabin, it made sense. But how could we make it green? While googling lots of "green" house stuff, I stumbled across a very unique looking home to which I was immediately attracted.

     My first thought was something like, "That's really neat, but that's not a home that can be built around here". This was my introduction to cob homes. I thought Arab would dismiss the idea as crazy, but to my surprise his only concern was the structural integrity (which is not an issue). Thus began our cob journey. From here, we (and when I say "we", it was mostly me) researched, read, and became immersed in cob information.

     Land- check. House plans- check. Building permit- check. Skid steer purchased- check (for efficiently mixing cob). Cob-building consultant- check (Christina Ott, barefootbuilder.com). We are having our first on-site consultation this week! I am so excited to set forth on this journey. What a blessing!

     Let me share my dream with you, picture this...

Beautiful cob house on the hillside. Downsizing. No mortgage. Living more simply. Passive solar. No central heat/air. Wood heater (rocket stove). Rainwater harvesting. Becoming more self-sustainable. Continued stay-at-home mom. My kids growing up with their grandparents, aunt, uncle, and cousins right beside them. These kids never knowing anything different about Mo and his blindness. Homeschooling. A garden. Canning and preserving. Dairy goats. Honeybees. Sounds like the perfect adventure to me.

     We hope to begin in October.
     <><