First, we have to be honest that when it comes to the roof of a home, it’s hard to create a totally natural and fully waterproof canopy without some kind of vapour barrier. The roof is the most important part of a house. I’d argue it’s more important than foundations. Case in point: my barn has no foundations to speak of and it’s been standing 200 years. But as any local here will tell you, if the roof on the barn goes, the barn has no more than a few years left before it collapses.
 
Upshot: If the roof is secure and functioning properly as a rain shelter, you’re good. If not...agh. So, many times it's going to be hard to get away with making a watertight roof without a vapour barrer.
 
What did they do in times of old then?
Well before the modern age and vapour barriers, people still made weather-resistant roofs. But...here’s the painful truth of the matter, they often needed quite a lot of maintenance and repair. Residents were also used to sporadic leaking, and roofs had to be retiled, re-thatched, or re-mortared from time to time. That was just how it was. Not that modern roofs are maintenance-free either of course, but there is one crucial difference: most people in olden days weren’t building alone. They worked as communities. Re-tiling a roof is pretty easy when there’s a crowd of you, but doing it single-handed, or even as a couple, is a lot slower and more tedious.
 
Anyway, here are your six beautiful natural roofing options, plus whether or not you can get away without a vapour barrier.

1. Living Roof
In my opinion the sturdiest of the lot. I love a living roof. I have two articles on making living roofs. Here’s how I made mine and here’s how Cath Coffee in London made hers.
 
Pros: If made properly they don’t leak, can’t crack, animals can wander all over them without breaking them, they’re hurricane proof, soundproof, and possibly help retard a fire too. Basically no maintenance required once it’s built.
 
Cons: These are heavy, so you need a decent roof structure to support the weight, which could end up being the equivalent of a couple of elephants (albeit spread more thinly). You’ll need some plastic, which is of course the devil these days. Also, a living roof really needs a damp climate to actually be ‘living’.
 
Vapour barrier? Definitely. You’ll need two in fact, to be sure of success. Something like an EPDM or bitumen will go over the roofing boards, then you’ll need a couple of sheets of plastic as a root barrier.

2. Tiles
Tiles are of course some of the oldest and most widely used natural roofing options in the world. For centuries at least, people have been firing clay and turning it into pots, amphoras, and roofing tiles. I confess tiles aren’t my favourite because they’re so frickin’ fragile, though on the plus side, they can look beautiful, and you might also get away without a vapour barrier with them. But tiling is definitely a two-person job unless you want to get rather tired.
 
Pros: You can use them to catch rainwater (big plus), beauty, simplicity. Possibly no need for a vapour barrier.
 
Cons: Fragile, can’t handle much falling on them without cracking, prone to get ripped off in gales, repairing tile roofs is annoying.
 
Vapour barrier? This really depends on which tiles you’re using, and how desperate you are to stay perfectly dry. For the more modern, interlocking roof tiles, if it’s an exterior roof, say a porch or a shed or something, you can easily get away with no barrier. But for a house, and for the old school Mediterranean curved tiles, a breathable roofing membrane under the tiles is usually recommended.

3. Slate
 
If you live anywhere with slate (such as Galicia, Spain) slate slabs make amazing roof tiles. They’re more forgiving to lay, and a bit less likely to get ripped off in the wind than traditional terracotta tiles, because they’re flat.
 
Pros: Sleek, easier to lay than terracotta (in my opinion). Good for rain harvesting.
 
Cons: You really need to be in a slate area to make a slate roof feasible and sustainable. Like other tiles they are potentially a bit leaky. And you have the issue of repair when the slate slabs crack (because a tree branch fell on them or something). Slate tiles are also fairly heavy.
 
Vapour barrier? See my comments on terracotta tiles above.

4. Thatch
 
Oh, who wouldn’t want a thatch roof? Romantic, completely natural, and super snug too. Thatch roofs are usually made from reeds, but people do also use grasses (though grass will last far less time). If thatch is made professionally it is nice and weatherproof too. So what do you need to consider?
 
Pros: Insulating as heck. And of course thatch is so beautiful.
 
Cons: Fire risk.  Thatch needs decent maintenance.
 
Vapour barrier? Ah well, according to the experts this all depends on if it’s a cold or a warm thatch roof. Here’s a good article explaining when and when not to use a vapour barrier with thatch.

5. Madras Roof (Brick and Lime Mortar)
 
One of India’s traditional roofing techniques is a method called the Madras roof. Bricks are laid at a 45-degree angle over the rafters and mortared using a special lime application. Karen Shetty explained how that was done here.

Pros: Beautiful, inexpensive, perfectly natural, honouring tradition.
 
Cons: Fairly heavy, so decent supporting rafters are required. Like thatch, if you are dead-set on an optimum job, get a professional to lay this kind of roof.
 
Vapour barrier? Normally vapour barriers are not used in India with these roofs.

6. Bamboo Roof
Ooh if I lived in a climate with bamboo… Bamboo is nice and sustainable, doesn’t weigh too much, and is a material geared to creating gorgeous roofing structures. There are two ways to use bamboo in roofing. Usually you see the bamboo used for the frame and then some sort of thatch/reed roof over the top. But you can also use bamboo cut in half to form a kind of crenellated roof which would be excellent for rain harvesting.
 
How to make a simple bamboo roof: 
​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZnMWDI6soo
 
Pros: Inexpensive (if you are in the bamboo zone), sustainable, lightweight, cool.
 
Cons: Bamboo can go mouldy if not treated properly.
 
Vapour barrier? Because bamboo roofs are usually found in warm humid climates, and because bamboo is pretty efficient at channeling away water, I’d say it would be a bad idea to stick a vapour barrier underneath due to the risk of mold.

Do you enjoy The Mud Home?
If you find these articles inspiring or useful please consider joining us on Patreon. Your support pays for the running of this website, my virtual help, and my sustenance. A big thank you to all The Mud Sustainers, and everyone chipping in and keeping these posts and articles coming.

(And when isn’t)
 
I’m fond of earthbag building for a number of reasons. In terms of cheap, sustainable disaster-proof structures, I think it’s hard to beat. Not many other building methods can compete in terms of price and sheer indestructibility. But that doesn’t mean it’s the most appropriate method for everyone in every situation, by a long shot.
 
One issue with earthbag is of course the polypropylene bags. If you substitute the PP with hemp or jute, things are improving (see my post on the sacks here). But in some (or even many) cases, none of this is even necessary. Let’s start with what earthbag is good at.

When is the right time for earthbag?
 
1. Flood plains. Cob or adobe cannot stand flooding. Earthbag can. So if you live somewhere that could potentially be flooded, and want to build with mud, earthbag gives a lot more peace of mind.
 
2. Earthquake zones. It is more than a little annoying when the natural building snobs sitting comfortably on solid ground in central or western Europe sniff at earthbag. For anyone who’s lived on an earthquake fault, whether your house is going to collapse on you or not is the main thing on your mind when you build. Nothing else matters. Sorry. It is true that straw bale copes pretty well with earthquakes too (not as well as earthbag, but good enough), but that won’t help if you, like many of the world’s poorer people, live in an earthquake zone also prone to flooding, or you face landslides. Having lived in Turkey twenty years, and seen near on 100,000 people die in one earthquake, I’m in love with earthbag. While living in my house I experienced five quakes that were over 6 on the Richter scale, and have never felt so safe.
 
But...what about those incredible Japanese temples? Yes, buildings like Horyuji temple in Japan with its unique joinery are testimony to the ingenuity of the human spirit. But you need to be pretty well-heeled or a very competent carpentry specialist to build such a structure. It’s simply out of reach for most of the world’s population.
 
3. Crazy weather. If you live in a place with tornadoes or hurricanes, earthbag buildings are basically invincible.

4. War zones or trigger-happy nutcase zones. Bulletproof walls may not be the first thing on your mind if you live in some places. In that case, lucky you. In other places it matters.
 
In short, earthbag is a life-saving, game-changing building method for disaster areas and economically challenged communities. It’s cheap, needs very few resources, it’s low-impact, and if there are a gang of you, a structure can be built quite fast. It requires little technical know-how, and you don’t need to be a professional or an engineer. That’s the good news. But there are other situations when earthbag building isn’t the smartest thing to do.
 
When is the wrong time for earthbag?
 
1.Retaining walls
Because of its tensile strength, a lot of people not unreasonably assume that earthbag would be a great idea for retaining walls. I’m not a fan of this, and have seen one or two collapse when water backs up behind the wall. You’d need plenty of drainage pipes running through it to solve the problem. Then there’s the issue of plastering the thing. If it’s out in the open with no covering, neither lime nor earth plaster are durable enough. So whaddya know? Concrete gets spread all over the wall, which begs the question as to what was the point of the earthbag in the first place.
 
Best option? Dry stone is hard to beat for retaining walls, because the gaps in the rocks act as a sieve and allow plenty of drainage. Dry stone walls are even used on a massive scale for highways here in Spain, because hey, it works.

2. Domes in wet climates
I’ve covered the whole dome issue here, but unless you are in a very dry climate a dome is often not the smartest idea. Again there are some workarounds, but creating a breathable waterproof plaster for such a building is a real challenge.
 
3. You’re not in a disaster zone with floods, earthquakes, or hurricanes.
If you’re lucky enough to live in a place without crazy skies or earth, then why bother with earthbag? Just build using wattle and daub, cob, or adobe instead. It’s less labour-intensive, and you don’t need the PP sacks.
 
4. Lone builders or couples
Earthbag is best for team builds. It’s labour intensive and lends itself to a gang of four or more. If not, it’s going to move very, very slowly, and you risk burnout. Again, wattle and daub is my method of choice for lone builders.

The arguable time for earthbag
I think there is another place for earthbag, and that is arty architecture. There is far too much emphasis on numbers and carbon footprints in the current environmental discussion, and far too little emphasis on balance, beauty, and peace. Who cares if we reduce our carbon output to zero if our world is so desperately ugly, bare, and noisy that we don’t want to exist anyway?
 
So I get it completely when an architect wants to create something amazing with earthbag. The technique gives rise to some very unusual and aesthetic designs. Despite the PP sacks, earthbag is still way more sustainable than many high-end so-called “eco” houses built out of concrete, or posh natural homes that squander precious natural resources (old growth trees, for example).
 
The upshot is, even when not used strictly in the right place and despite the PP sacks, earthbag is still an incredibly low-impact, accessible, and durable building technique.

​Do you enjoy The Mud Home?
If you find these articles inspiring or useful please consider joining us on Patreon. Your support pays for the running of this website, my virtual help, and my sustenance. A big thank you to all The Mud Sustainers, and everyone chipping in and keeping these posts and articles coming.

I’ve used the word “quit” provocatively of course. Way better to have tried your dream out for size and decided “no thanks,” than to spend your whole life just imagining. But it is true to say that some people give up and never complete their projects, while others live in a perpetual state of building chaos for years and years sometimes with  partnerships breaking up under the strain. On the other hand, other people get through the sticky moments and complete their home. You see the end of that process a few years later in a gorgeous social media post. But that result didn’t just appear out of the ether. There’s a bit of a knack.

What people think is hard about building (but mostly isn’t)
 
It’s often the people we least expect that succeed in this game. That’s because there are some massive misconceptions about what it really takes to start, and more importantly, finish your own home.
 
The technical/engineering aspect of building for the most part is not freakin’ rocket science. And for the most part it’s also not why people fail. For the most part you don’t need to have some sort of qualification to build a house. Of course some smart aleck will no doubt point to an example of someone somewhere whose house collapsed. True, it happens. But it’s not the reason the majority of owner-builders end up quitting. Most lay people who start building focus an awful lot on technical and structural elements of the build (as they should), but sometimes it’s to the detriment of other aspects. Knowing how to do something isn’t the same as actually getting it done.

Reasons It All Goes Pear-shaped:
 
1. Disorganisation
Honestly, this is probably the single most common reason I see that people come unstuck. You need to work in an appropriate order and stay vaguely on track. It sounds straight forward. It’s not. There is a lot to think about when you start building and it’s easy to get completely lost. I’m an Earth whispering hippy that talks to trees every day and likes to sculpt flowers out of mud, but even I have a game plan and a to-do list. Some sort of structured approach is essential. Prioritising correctly is a life-saver.
 
In the same vein, you need to avoid getting distracted as far as is humanly possible. The more you can stay on task and keep some forward momentum doing the right tasks at the right time, the easier it all is.
 
For an example see Dianne and Bismil’s monster renovation in Spain. I’ve learned a lot from Dianne because she’s super organised, and moves cleanly and clearly through the build.

2. Refusing to get in professional help when necessary
I doubt many Lone Rangers will to listen to my take on it, but hey, since when has that stopped me:)) Let’s face it though, it does look a bit like some of us think help is akin to failure. So we carry on doing a sub-par job, wasting masses of time and energy on parts of the build which are neither our speciality nor enthusiasm. Basic plumbing is left unattended. Taps don’t work. Solar power systems function poorly and everyone is using a torch to read their books. Floors are not laid. Kitchens and bathrooms don’t work properly. Everything is a bit of a mess. Finally, family members lose patience and skedaddle out of there. At the end of this sorry state of affairs, said builder blames said everyone else for the failure. Yeeees, seen it too many times to mention.
 
I won’t lie, I hobble under the Lone Ranger fallacy as much as the next independence-lover. I also know it’s not easy, and the criticisms of onlookers can be hard to stand at times. But I can face the truth when I see I’m not doing a good job, and will get in a pro if I have to. Come on folks, get real! Even professional builders work in teams, and hire plumbers, electricians, and carpenters.
 
For an example of what I mean, take a look at Nad Kad’s amazing strawbale house. Yes he built a lot of it alone, and is a genius at clay plaster, but he never fails to mention that Jim Schalles was the pro behind the gorgeous (and well-functioning) rocket stove.
 
3. Unrealistic goals and biting off more than you can chew.
Most of us make this mistake somewhere along the line, but some folk catastrophically misjudge the effort involved in building. Ianto Evans said something along the lines of, "Remember everything takes twice as long as you think and costs three times as much." I must admit, personally I come in not too far over budget, but things definitely always move far slower than I want or expect.

So before you buy that ancient castle in Scotland, or decide to construct the world's first multi-storey earthbag mansion, take a long step back. Try a small build first and get a feel for what's involved. Unless your house is a very teeny tiny cottage (think 15m2) your total build is probably going to take at least two years. Even if you have ten people helping, (and take it from me, half of those ten probably won’t be much help) it will still take that time. Don’t believe me? Just take a look at this article by the very professional building team at Koluba, who know exactly what they’re doing and have stacks of volunteers. That house isn’t huge at all. It still took the best part of two years.

Yeees. If you think you’ll finish your home in a summer, you’re probably new to the game.
 
But what about my earthbag house in Turkey? It is true that by sheer will and good fortune we erected the structure of (a small) earthbag house up in six weeks. But it took me another eighteen months to complete the interior. That house is just 6m diameter.

4. Poor management skills
People think management is bossing people around or being in charge. In truth, ninety percent of management is people skills. And the biggest management crime I see is lack of acknowledgement for everyone in the team. It is lovely to do things yourself and create your own home, but only a fool thinks anything is built single-handedly. And only a very ungrateful and arrogant fool dismisses the vital assistance and contribution of everyone on their team, including and especially those in the background cooking, cleaning or washing. At. Your. Peril. Even a lone hag like me who loves to work in solitude, who has no one cooking for me or washing my clothes, acknowledges the help of my team. Without my good neighbours, my dad, my friends, my Patreon crowd, and the sporadic but oh so needed help of Jose Manuel, I would have been snookered many times.
 
For an example see Kay La Bella’s project. She has such a wonderful way with people that makes everyone want to help, and the energy of the project simply shines.
 
Ways to win in management:
Say thank you often. Point out the fab things people have contributed. Listen to other people’s ideas, and incorporate some of them. Include everyone, exclude no one. But the most important words to overuse are “thank you”.

5. Running out of money
I have to admit, I’d never quit because of this. Never. I mean you can always scrape a bit together somehow, can’t you? I think if you use mud, lime, and listen to your land, you can pretty much always keep building. Creativity and willpower trump money any day. Use second-hand stuff, use your wits, use the abundant resources of your land, and don’t buy into all this expensive Grand Designs lark. Stop competing with the Joneses, they’re idiots anyway. The irony is, when much of your house is homemade, it becomes more attractive.
 
My current build is quite elaborate for me, but my budget is tiny. I just move slower and make (sometimes hard) choices. Nevertheless, I see that money is an ostensible reason people give up.
 
Some ways to mitigate financial ruin:

1. Stop buying stuff! Use what you have to hand unless a purchase is absolutely necessary.
   
2. Move through your project bit by bit. Don’t get scattered, and keep it small at the outset. Complete one structure or one room or one part of the build first. Complete it well enough that you can live comfortably in that bit while you find money for the rest.
   
3. Find some way of earning money while you build. There’s always a way. It also gives you a break from building, so it’s a win-win.
   
4. Be frugal and modest, but don’t fall into scarcity mode. When you slide into that mindset it all gets a bit grim. Been there, done that.
   

Do you enjoy The Mud Home?
If you find these articles inspiring or useful please consider joining us on Patreon. Your support pays for the running of this website, my virtual help, and my sustenance. A big thank you to all The Mud Sustainers, and everyone chipping in and keeping these posts and articles coming.

Beginners’ Tips for Going Rural

When you first buy land or move into the country it can be daunting to know which tools you need. Here is my list of the first 10 things I’d buy. I also asked around in our Facebook group, and not everyone agreed with me, so I'll add the valuable recommendations of those off-gridders at the end.

Forget the expensive high tech at the beginning, especially if you’re off-grid. Consider where you are going to store this stuff and how you’re going to power it. The more machines you have, the more headaches if you ask me. They are prone to get ruined by weather, or even stolen. I’ve grown to love the simple tools. How amazing they are— the axe, the pick, the scythe. They are cheap, need no power or fuel, they are quiet, and many times do a better job than their noisy mechanistic counterparts. No one nicks them, either.

Ground Tools
If you’re starting from scratch, you want some old-school gardening tools at the outset, because the first things you’ll be doing are clearing spaces and digging. Sadly  a lot of folk can’t seem to do anything without involving some earth-wrecking hulk of a machine, but if you’ve been with The Mud Home a while, you’ll know that isn’t how I roll. Land is so precious, so alive, so communicative. Using the simple old tools keeps us in shape, and always returns a more aesthetic result without demolishing any number of treasures our land is holding that we haven’t noticed yet.
 
1. Pick
Probably the most fundamental tool of the lot. Whether it’s for digging a hole, digging rocky ground, or breaking ground, the pick is the one.
 
2. Scythe/sickle/machete
You need some sort of undergrowth clearing tool, and it depends on your land as to what that will be. In Turkey where it was rocky scrubland, the sickle and machete were more useful. Here in Spain’s grassy north, it’s the scythe. Scything is such a beautiful way to spend an afternoon. I’m still baffled by why anyone would want to strim instead of scythe. Strimmers and petrol mowers are ghastly, noisy, wildlife massacring, and unpleasant to use. They’re not even faster than the scythe. Take a look at this video to see what I mean.

3. Spade
There are many different kinds of spades, and again it depends on your soil, but if you can only buy one at the outset, get one that can both dig earth (has a pointy end) and that you can use as a shovel too (not too heavy).
 
4. Wheelbarrow
So fundamental. I try to imagine life without the wheelbarrow sometimes, and it’s a back-breaking world of drudge. Hail to the wheelbarrow inventor! The tyres burst sometimes, which is the only bummer. I have a spare wheel for mine just in case.
 
5. Axe
I have come to love the axe after I was taught how to use it properly. I have two: a big one for wood splitting, and a little one which is just such a wonderful tool for chipping points into posts, scraping off bark and dry rot, and for some basic chiselling too.
 
6. Rake
Up there with the pick and the spade. If you’re terracing or gardening, a metal rake is a must for dragging that topsoil where you want it to go, or for ‘sweeping’ rocks and stones from said topsoil.

Other Mud Homers' comments:
"A shovel, wheelbarrow, and a Portuguese hoe-like tool called an ‘enchada’ will accomplish a lot and they’re what I started with for my first job clearing top soil for a parking area. Also, I’m a massive fan of rock bars... " Says Kirsty who's doing an amazing job of building her own off-grid world in Portugal.

"To the above list, I would add an auger especially if you have any fences to erect or sheds to build etc. We use it instead of the clamshell fencepost diggers." Says Kit who's a very handy off-gridder in the States.

"The pick I use a ton. I have 2 because i keep breaking the handle." Says Chris who's sitting in an idyllic bit of rainforest in Columbia.

Building Tools
 
7. Hammer and nails
I suppose if you were desperate (I’ve done this) you could use a rock as a hammer, but  yes the hammer is fundamental for wood work, stone bashing, and so much more.
 
8. A decent hand saw for wood cutting
Easier said than found sometimes. Choose the teeth length carefully. Too long a tooth and the saw is always catching and harder to control. Too short a tooth and you’re busting a gut to saw anything.
 
9. A wrench and spanner collection
This can be pretty handy too for fixtures, plumbing, and so on.

Power Tools
 
9. A decent battery-operated drill/power driver (and screws)
Without a doubt the most empowering power tool of the lot. I mean there’s so much you can do with a drill because of its multiple attachments: bore holes in wood, metal, and masonry, screw in screws, you can get wire brush attachments for cleaning, attachments for digging out mortar, attachments for sanding...yeah. Sometimes the tech really does what it’s supposed to, and the drill is one such example.
 
10. Chainsaw
Love it or hate it? I hate the noise and the forest-ripping brutality of this machine, but I’m not gonna lie, it’s useful. Not just for firewood, but for building. I can now cut joists by chainsaw almost as straight as with a circular saw. It’s also necessary for pruning large branches. But seriously, if we can make cars almost silent, why oh why has the chainsaw not been modified with silencers?
 
A bad workman blames his/her tools.
If you’ve got these 10 tools, you can do pretty much anything, and if people reckon they can’t, I find it a little strange, because this is about all I had to work with for most of my time building my earthbag house in Turkey. But…

Bonus luxuries that could make life pretty sweet
Depending on your areas of interest, there will be some other power tools that allow you to create with more finesse, particularly for wood work and metal work. Do yourself a favour though and buy a cordless, battery-operated, nifty device. I can’t quite work out why anyone is still buying these massive mains-powered machines anymore, they’re so outdated (unless you’re a professional carpenter or something). I’m wondering if people don’t realise how the tech has improved and how powerful the new cordless devices are. Cordless, battery-operated tools have so many advantages:
 
1. If you’re off-grid, you can easily charge them on a solar power system (conversely you’ll be hard pushed to have enough power margin to use the mains’ versions).
 
2. Cordless tools are much easier to store. You can keep them in the boot of your car if you want.
 
3. They are way easier to use, and in my opinion way more useful. You can carry them to any part of your building or land, rather than trying to carry bits of timber to the machine or messing around with dangerous extension cables.
 
The Most Fundamental Power Tools
Grinder – Again with its many attachments the grinder can be very useful, though it’s by no means totally necessary. I never had one in Turkey and we built a whole house.
 
Circular saw – For woodwork enthusiasts and joiners, this is definitely going to be useful. Get one of the new battery-operated beauties though. You can carry them wherever you want, up onto a roof if necessary.
 
Sander – Well, you can get sanding attachments for grinders, so this would be last on my list. But a decent sander can do a better job on flat pieces of wood.
 
Jigsaw – I do things with my jigsaw that are best not mentioned. If you like curves and circles, this is the tool for you:)
 
Small extras:
I’ve only mentioned the bigger tools. Of course there are zillions of small cheap extras, like tape measures, knives, screwdrivers, and paintbrushes, but that would kinda take forever.

Other Mud Homers' Comments:
"For carpentry definitely a tape measure, a good saw, a good square, chisels, and lots of pencils! For power tools I think my orbital sander is great because I can’t realistically sand giant beams by hand but many other power tool jobs can easily be done with hand tools." Says Kirsty. And I second the good square, and the pencils which are often devoured by the lesser known pencil weasel that hides in all building sites the world over.

I used to go to the gym when I lived in the city. Now I get better exercise, outside in the sun and fresh air, and improve my land. No monthly fee for that. I do miss a bit of the social aspect of the gym, but this is better in every other way. Says Chris in general. So true! And yes, that's what you don't get when you sit in a mechanical digger all day:)

Do you enjoy The Mud Home?
If you find these articles inspiring or useful please consider joining us on Patreon. Your support pays for the running of this website, my virtual help, and my sustenance. A big thank you to all The Mud Sustainers, and everyone chipping in and keeping these posts and articles coming.

Nestled somewhere in the Rockies where the days have sharp edges and nights are pierced by starlight, a rather lovely lady is building a rather lovely mud and straw house with a lot of rather lovely people. The backdrop is pretty impressive too, what with grass-swathed mountains plunging into roaring rivers. Idaho. Hmm.
 
Balecob
Kay La Bella’s gorgeous little cottage is interesting not least because it’s balecob. Don’t know what balecob is? I admit, I wasn’t too sure either. It’s a hybrid between straw bale and cob, where the advantages of both cob (structural strength) and straw bale (high insulation) are used to create load-bearing structures. See the links at the bottom for more details on that.

​But there was another thing about this project that caught my eye, and that was the obvious good feeling and community spirit. As soon as Kay joined our special Facebook clan and I began following her build, I was struck by the generosity of her character. She honestly never has a bad word to say about anyone. Needless to say when it came to building her fabulous little balecob cottage, she seemed to be continuously surrounded by smiling, hardworking assistants, a lot of whom seemed to sport plenty of well-defined muscle tissue:)
 
But why Idaho? And why balecob?
 
“There are no building codes in the county, that’s why I bought there, so I didn’t have to get permits or have stamped architectural drawings,” explains Kay, who really has found a stunning spot. And I tell you when I read her comment, and saw the rugged escarpments and rushing rivers, I had half a mind to go buy there too.
 
So how big is the house?
 
“I didn’t realize when I bought the property that there was a size restriction. The total footprint had to be no bigger than 900 square feet. The little subdivision I am a part of had that one “rule”. So the house is about 750 square feet including a small loft, and a to-be root cellar in the back is about 200 square feet,” Kay told me. For those of us in Europe and many parts of Asia, that sounds pretty flipping spacious.

Cat Taylor and friends
Kay did a lot of research and prep work before starting her house. She first tried out cob with an oven, and a shed. So by the time she came to the house, which is always a daunting endeavour, she had some mud skills at the ready.
 
She also hired help strategically, which is something I do too, and can be a really good idea. You can really learn from specialists.
 
“I am so blessed with good friends and family, and they all helped with the grunt work of building the last of the stem wall. We thought we had it done for Cat Taylor so we could start with the straw bales. Ha! She got here and we discovered we needed a whole other layer of stone for the wall,” laments Kay.
 
Cat Taylor is a well-known natural builder who runs the beautiful Natural Building Organisation, which is far more than just a natural building school. Cat also works with horses for special needs and veterans suffering PTSD.
 
“I had hired Cat to come out when another of her workshops in Colorado cancelled. She didn’t really do a workshop with me, I just paid her to come and share her knowledge. But, the friends that showed up did get to work with her. She got us to the point of placing the posts and setting some window and door frames, and then left us with instructions on completing the beams, roof, root cellar roof and balecob infill to follow. I was a bit nervous when she left, having not had her here to get us started with what she knows of bale/cob, but we were very successful. She and so many other resources were there coaching us on, as well as a bit of intuitive knowing.”
 
And honestly Kay has done such a sterling job. She and the team managed to get the exterior complete by winter, which is a big deal.

How did Kay and friends make this house?
 
Long-time Mud Home readers will be getting used to the order of events by now. As always we start with the rubble trench foundation, upon which was built a nice stone stem wall. The rubble trench is your drainage (see more on that here). The stem wall keeps your mud/straw house off the wet ground.
 
The hardest part of the build
There’s always one bit of the build that really tests you. It might be the roof. It might be the plaster or the finishing. For Kay and her family it was that rubble trench and stem wall.
 
“The rock for the rubble trench needed to be clean, because its main purpose is to keep water drained from the house in case of a huge rain. So the trench needed to slope away from the house, have a layer of clean rock size 2-3 inches at the bottom with the drain pipe, then a layer of clean bigger rock 3-4 inches on top, all tamped down as we went,” explains Kay. “I had so much rock! But we needed to sort it into sizes, put it into 5 gallon buckets, dump it on a screen over the wheelbarrow and hose the dirt off to clean it, then dump it in the trench. It was painstaking and seemed to take forever! It was a huge challenge, and none of us had done anything like it before. But I did my homework. The rocks were mostly all laid by hand.”

Post and beam frame
Once the foundation was laid, a post and beam structure was erected.

Balecob walls
Next came the balecob infilling. As you can see the bales were laid on the stem wall, and everything was ‘cobbed’ into place.
 
“Cat Taylor convinced me to do bale/cob, but she suggested to cut the bales in half lengthwise so we would have approximately 9” wide bales instead of 18,” says Kay. And that was a great idea to save space (and bales).

Roof
 
“The supports for the roof are lodge pole pine rafters about 5-6 inches in diameter set with a 24 in space between them. They are then covered with 4 x 8 sheets of plywood or OSB. The main roof has a kind of tar paper vapor barrier on it (not sure how natural that is),” says Kay.
 
I think it’s really hard to get away without some sort of non-natural water barrier in the roof. I mean  yes, you can forego it, but you usually end up with leaks. After the vapor barrier came the metal sheeting, which they screwed into place.
 
“The smaller side roof that will cover my ‘root cellar’ also has the plywood nailed to rafters, then sheets of cardboard to cover the nail heads so as not to puncture the rubber pond liner that was the final layer, before dirt (which I still need to add to, for a living roof).”

This will be Kay’s permanent home. She came to Idaho from Colorado to escape the crowds and help her daughter with her new coffee roasting business. There’s only one downside to Idaho.
 
“I truly desired a longer growing season. I love to garden, and grow my own food,” says Kay. And sitting slap bang on Rapid River, she enjoys free irrigation water that is gravity fed from an irrigation canal about 100 yards above her property. Perfect for gardening and fruit trees. Yes, you might notice I’m rather taken with this property:))

Kay’s balecob house isn’t finished yet, so I’m going to cover it again next year. In the meantime a big round of applause to a brave and lovely woman creating her own gorgeous world away from the madding crowds.
 
Things to take from this project:
 
1. Hiring help strategically can make all the difference between happy success, and exhausted failure. Some people do get rather into the Lone Ranger mindset in building and see any kind of instruction as a sign of failure. In truth, failure more often comes by not enlisting help at the correct times.
 
2. What goes around comes around. When you’re generous and see the best in people like Kay, people are more likely to want to work with you and help you.
 
3. Some counties in Idaho have no building codes. Oooh.
 
Relevant links:
For a super step-by-step article on how to build balecob, go to Mother Earth News:
https://www.motherearthnews.com/green-homes/balecob-how-to-zbcz1802

Do you enjoy The Mud Home?
If you find these articles inspiring or useful please consider joining us on Patreon. Your support pays for the running of this website, my virtual help, and my sustenance. A big thank you to all The Mud Sustainers, and everyone chipping in and keeping these posts and articles coming.