Can you build mud houses in cold climates?

23/10/2017

Insulating cob and earthbag houses. And do you need to?

“I live high in the mountains, and it snows regularly. Will earthbag be warm enough?” This is the type of question I field on a regular basis. So are cob, mud or earthbag homes good for cold climates?

The short answer is no. The long answer is hybrid. But first, it pays to properly grasp the difference between thermal mass and insulation.

Thermal Mass (Earthbag, cob, wattle and daub, and adobe all provide thermal mass).
Earthern walls provide thermal mass. This means they absorb the heat and store it (at a rate of about an inch of wall an hour). If you are in a warm, dry climate with plenty of sun this is what happens: The house absorbs the sun’s heat in the day, and then at night when the temperature drops the walls radiate the heat back into the house. By morning the earth has released all the stored heat and has absorbed the cool in its place. So now in the heat of the day the opposite occurs; the walls release cool into your house. It’s a type of natural air-con. I experienced it with my own earthbag house in Turkey and it was quite wonderful.

But...you need sun for this to work. If you live in a cold, wet climate, this system won’t benefit you because your walls are going to store cold air instead, which is not what you want.

Insulation (Straw bale insulates)
Insulation is different. It slows down temperature exchange (heat or cold are prevented from moving through the wall). In the natural building world straw, saw dust, reeds, hemp, wool, and paper are the most common insulating materials.

Photo: Sophie Hunter and Hakan Oge (their beautiful straw bale home in Turkey)

With this in mind, typically you would be advised to build a straw bale house in a colder climate, and an earthern house in a warm, sunny climate. But not everything in this life is typical. In fact there are an awful lot of extra factors to consider.

Quirks and exceptions to the rule.

1. Cold climates are often lumped together in the thermal mass discussion. But in my experience the real killer for earth is cold with no sun. Back in my earthbag house in Turkey, I remember the temperature dropping to -7 degrees celsius where I lived, but because the sun was shining, and I had south facing windows which acted like a greenhouse to catch the solar warmth, the walls still absorbed that solar heat and despite the subzero temperature, I didn’t have to burn the fire until the sun began wane.

My personal experience was as follows: My earthbag house was always warmer on cold, sunny days than on cloudy days. I had to light the fire on rainy days even though the temperature was actually a good ten degrees higher than on cold clear days.

2. Earth will cope a lot better with the cold if you live in your house permanently, and therefore heat it regularly. As mentioned the walls retain the heat. The thicker the walls, the longer they retain it. Over time the house gets warmed to the core, which can carry you over a shortish cold spell. The trouble is of course, if you leave your house for days on end it also gets cold to the core, and may take a couple of days to heat up.

Conclusion: If you are building a weekend holiday home, or a community centre that is not continually lived in, and you are in a cold, grey climate, you will desperately need insulation. On the other hand, if you are building a smallish mud house, with excellent passive solar design, you live in it continually, and the temperature is not perpetually subzero but goes up and down with plenty of sunshine, you may well get away with it.

What if you live in a cold, non-sunny climate and still want an earthen house?

There are reasons you may not want to build a straw bale house (I have a straw allergy for example). So what you need to do is create a hybrid, and insulate your mud walls. How far you insulate will depend on how cold your climate is. You could create a straw-heavy earth plaster for your walls, or coat them in some sort of papercrete. Some people have attached reed mats to walls and plastered over them, Or lined the walls with straw bales. Someone suggested creating a lath and stuffing it with wool, or straw. Cork can also be added to the render, or to a lime render (thanks to Cath Coffey for that one;)

You would be forgiven for thinking my mud home in Turkey never saw the cold, but we had our subzero moments:)

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35 Comments

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Harold

23/10/2017 03:55:58 pm

The insulation would be better on the out side.
A rocket mass heater would work well in the home.

Atulya

24/10/2017 12:28:42 am

Yes you need a wood burner or rocket stove for sure.

Sandi Berumen

23/10/2017 05:30:47 pm

Hmmmm -- did not think about an earthbag home needing insulation due to the thickness of the walls. Did not take into consideration the breathing part. LOL

There is a spray foam insulation material that is safe and environmentally non toxic -- insulates well and can be used inside or outside. If used outside you would use plastic roof paint to protect it. Check out eskimo insulation. You can find a lot of information if you google shipping container insulation. There is also an aircrete material that would work to insulate that is also waterproof and is non toxic and does not off gas. Google aircrete or permaculture. Happy insulating!

24/10/2017 12:39:49 am

Hmm, I wouldn't stick plastic paint on as it would kill the breathability of the house (not sure if the foam can breathe, but if it's synthetic probably not, will research this). It's the thermal mass situation which causes the house to hold the cold (or heat) and which is the real issue with earth in cold climates. You really need a material which allows the house to breathe, but is still a great insulator (straw and wool manage this).

Insulating natural homes is a bit of a juggle, because you are trying to avoid creatoing an airtight box (as is the conventional way of insulating non-natural homes) as this method makes your home airless, and allows mold and humidity to accumulate. But some of the 'cretes could work. I'm still researching aircrete:)) Will post about that when I have all the details.

24/10/2017 01:14:25 am

All houses need to be ventilated in some manner. Living in an Airstream trailer as I do, requires some ventilation due to the aluminum skin not being very breathable! I have a four inch diameter air intake vent under my wood stove and open a roof vent at the other end of the trailer for flow-through ventilation and that works.

So I think using rigid foam insulation on the outside walls of an earthbag house will work, if you ventilate the house.

24/10/2017 06:10:30 am

Yes, I understand what you are saying and the websites talk about this because especially when using a shipping crate you have to have air movement so that it does not rust out. They suggest windows higher up to allow for air flow, obviously windows that open -- It was just a suggestion for someone trying to do the earthbag build for financial reasons However, just the insulation is breathable, hence the need for the plastic or rubber roof paint or one could build a roof out far enough to protect it. The insulation material supplies about 7.5 per inch of thickness for the foam as regards the thermal mass. Depending on how cold you would spray on that number of inches to do the job. The foam is more expensive, and the next use would be the wool, but that typically takes up interior space and the foam can be on the outside. They of course also talk about using wool etc. as well, but if you are in a very cold and wet climate you need to have protection from the wet as well -- and that seemed to me to sort of be the questions -- extreme cold and constant wet. Colorado does not really get the extreme cold, nor wet, however that has not been completely true over the past couple of years. With the use of stoves is obviously useable -- they do off gas into the interior to some degree no matter how well constructed.

willy

24/10/2017 04:19:23 pm

I think one needs to use the optimal building material for the given climate. Mass for hot climates, insulation for cold climates. Sure, you could do mud in a cold climate and then insulate, but why bother (especially given all the manpower necessary to do just an earthen home)? The other natural insulation often considered is light clay straw, but again why go to the extra work when you could just use plastered straw bale (unless of course you're allergic to straw)? Would someone who is allergic to (wheat) straw also be allergic to barley/rice/etc straw?

23/10/2017 10:37:50 pm

I live in a cold climate and if I was to build an earthbag home I would build a hexagonal shape instead of round, so I could use standard size rigid foam insulation panels on the outside.

Gail Penrod

24/10/2017 03:08:15 am

In Colorado there are a couple earth bag homes built at about 8,000 feet in the mountains. One is covered with a paper crete, the other with an earthen plaster. The key to their being very warm and cozy in the snow is that there is a LOT of sunshine even in the cold winter. To my knowledge they don’t use other insulation but focus on thermal mass (one of the homes does have a rocket stove).

24/10/2017 04:14:15 pm

I think I once read that Boulder has something like 300+ sunny days a year, even during the winter. Thus, with south facing glazing, an earthbag house could still work.

24/10/2017 11:12:50 pm

Willy -- to comment on your question about Wheat straw and allergies. It would depend on why you are allergic to wheat, if you have Celiac Disease you would not only be allergic to wheat and could not work with it as it would absorb into your system and cause major problems, but you would also be allergic to barely, rye and oats as well. Rice would be okay, but is there rice straw -- I thought rice grew in bogs. Anyway a person with any kind of wheat sensitivity due to Celiac disease would not be able to live in any kind of straw bale house,

25/10/2017 01:28:49 pm

Great comments! Many useful points made here. And yes Colorados 300+ days of sunshine will work well for earth. Everyone's situation is so so different that the optimum is just not possible sometimes. It can be rather frustrating when you get the same "build straw bale" line barked at you 100 times, and you've got limited time, and limited resources, and not a blade of straw in sight. Choosing a house design is always a balance between economics, available materials, climate, environmental impact, etc.There are many reasons someone may not want to, or be able to use straw bales. If you don't have straw bales in your area then you have to import them (in my case that would have been from about 150 miles away, for some people in some countries it would be even further) which is both very expensive, and not particularly sustainable. Some people are trying to build homes on remote mountain tops without road access, some people simply don't have the money to buy the bales, some folk have land filled with beautiful loam and want to use it. My posts are always written for everyone everywhere in all economic and climatic conditions to properly empower them to make their own choice.

Christo

27/10/2017 01:42:44 pm

Atulya,

I find something very odd here. My initial take on meeting your Mud blog was that you wanted to get away from concrete. Plus. Plus. It was an eye opener to see what you did with really unconventional (to my mind) materials and the obverse approach you took in imitating older building practices. Growing up here in South Africa we were used to the black farm labourers building wattle and daub houses with thatched roofs. Now they are housed in brick with corrugated iron roofs.

The walls were made of interwoven saplings covered with a mixture of mud and cow dung. With periodic maintenance likewise these houses lasted for years. Decades. Very similar to the Mexican adobe walls.

I find it odd that posters here are harking back to the industrial materials a.k.a. carbon footprint. All these materials originate from plastics. I.e. coal or oil. In themselves or in manufactury.

Yes, I agree, getting back to the prairie schooner and the candle won't happen again, but surely we can minimize the carbon footprint.

Seems it's going to take a VERY LARGE headshift to get there.

28/10/2017 02:18:55 pm

Christo, I'm not a purist, and find purism positively destructive. Nor am I a finger-wagger. This site really strives to do two things: 1. Empower people to build mud homes and a create more low impact lifestyle (which involves as you mentioned from the other article, a radical change in mindset about what people think they need and want, and what they actually need and want). People have been incredibly brainwashed by big business over the past 50 years (in the West at least) and firmly believe they need things that they patently don't. Many of these things actually make them ill or kill them.

2.The other thing I'm passionate about which comes across in my other more creative blog is reconnecting with the Earth and our inner power. For me these two strands are linked. We are consuming like parasites (honestly when I first returned from Turkey to the UK I couldn't believe my EYES at the waste) because our connection with nature, community and self has been severed, and likewise our disconnection with the planet is caused by a dependence on those same consumer goods. It hasn't made us happy. Despite all their conveniences, relative wealth and privilege Westerners seem to be the most miserable people on the planet.

Regarding natural building, I ALWAYS prefer and advocate natural materials where possible and sustainable. But...let's be clear, natural materials are not always sustainable. You could make a lovely yurt out of cheetah skins. It would be 100% natural, but definitely not sustainable. Cedar is another sore point. And if everyone begins to use the same material, that wouldn't be sustainable either.

I discuss this point in this blog post:
http://www.themudhome.com/mudbuilding/natural-sustainable-or-quality-building

Re: Concrete. I'm anti-concrete because it's environmental impact is just massive. It's up there with the oil/fossil fuel industry, and yet no one discusses it. It's also completely unnecessary for construction. Because I watched how this bizarre obsession with it literally ripped Turkey's forests and heritage apart, it is one of my cause celebres:)

25/10/2017 07:55:23 pm

It may interest you to know that the best insulating material is breathable. Yes, you guessed it! Air. Real reason why double glazing works. You just need to keep it still. Also the real reason why straw bale walls work. Try this to prove it. Wear a very thick jersey or cardigan of whatever material on the inside to create a deep air space. On the outside wear a closely woven wind resistant jacket (no GoreTex) to prevent the air inside being moved out of the jacket. You will remain warm even in reasonably high wind.

Build deep cavity walls at no extra cost and seal it properly at the top. The inside wall can be thicker for thermal mass and the cavity air will insulate it from the elements. The outside wall needs to stand normal wear and tear.

Additionally build a windbreak by planting suitable trees in the main direction of your regional winds. These should not be extremely dense since the wind will then only dump on the house over the tops of the trees. You need to slow the wind down. Several staggered rows may do the trick. the house must stand in a proper lee.

You may have heard of atrium heating. With clever air venting you may heat your house from a sun facing glazed verandah. This may even facilitate ventilating the house.

Main theme; stop the draughts. Ventilate fast enough for health and slow enough for replacement of heat in the new air.

Oh yes, watch the roof! The hottest air sits right under the ceiling! May be the most important part of the insulation of a house, yet mostly badly neglected. Building a low ceilinged house will save enormously on heating.

Throw your mind at the problem not the money, as in the other post in this e-mail. @wwf talks about needs and wants.

25/10/2017 08:57:31 pm

Nice comment. Thanks for that Christo.

27/10/2017 09:33:02 am

Christo in reading your comment I am a little confused, because to use air as insulation wouldn't you have to enrobe your walls in double sealed material to create the insulating barrier and then that would stop the "breathability" of the house and you would still need to ventilate somehow. Double glazed windows are fully sealed with no air movement in or out. So exactly how would you build an earthbag house and keep it fully breathable using an air barrier, what other materials would you use. The earthbag itself by being breathable is obviously going to allow for the movement of air and thus break down any thermal air barrier unless it was sealed on both sides. Would appreciate the information on this, as I am a little confused as to just how it would work in this application, not being a builder. Good information however.

27/10/2017 01:16:48 pm

Hi Sandi,

I did not want to go into too much detail, but the background to it is this. You get the brown stone house in the cities, but it seems most US houses are built in wood. The brown stone house uses air bricks high on the perimeter walls to the outside. These are about the size of two bricks, about 200 x 200 millimetres or 8" x 8" in surface area. These are earthenware moulds with with neat slots in them for air passage. Normally ventilation is effected by roughly 3 mm (1/16") tolerances around doors and windows are not very tightly sealed. It follows that the movement of air which ventilates the house is well controlled. I grew up in such a house here in South Africa. We had a small slow combustion stove - forerunner to the rocket stove - lit mornings and evenings to heat bath water. This also kept the living spaces warm throughout the day. The pressed steel ceilings were 11 ft high without any insulation except the accumulated dust of years.

Later I stayed in a flat (apartment) on a hill. This was exposed to the climatic south easterly winds with a vengeance. I sealed the door and the windows in that wall very, very well. The service shaft had no ceiling and the winds actually blew the ceilings off their fittings. Being a handyman, I nailed them back and got the owner to fit a ceiling to the shaft. Then I could live there with virtually no heating. Granted we do not have temperatures of -20C on average.

The atrium heating idea comes from a man in Canada. He built a south facing verandah onto his house totally enclosed in glass. In the wall between that and the house he installed vents, top and bottom in the walls, with vents operated manually. There is another idea for heating a house. It is a simple chimney funnel with a full sun facing glass front. Vents into the house top and bottom again.

OK, cavity walls. The brown stone could be built with 9.5" walls on the outside, no cavities. You could also get outside walls with 13" walls and a 4" cavity. Plastered inside and out to your choice.

You have to change your thinking here. Throw away the insulation materials and relieve the drag on your pocketbook. Build your inside walls with the bags as shown by Atulya for thermal mass. Choose your cavity. I would say anything up to 5" max and use smaller bags for a thinner wall on the outside. Interlink the walls with galvanized iron grommets between barbed wire reinforcements inside the walls. For the rest there is nothing in between, just sweet air!

I have not tested this design as such but the thinking behind it is R values. These values are assigned to all materials in building. Maximum is R = 1 = Total insulation. Steel has a very low R value. This denotes the temperature difference between the two sides of the material, or the temperature gradient through the material if you will.

Google this and you should be able to design something very suitable to your needs. Oh yes, google the term qanat. Interestingly you can have underground freezing water in the desert. I forget particular detail. You can also have hot air cooling down colder air. Fact. Google it.

Ventilation. The bulk of the surfaces making up your earthship are sealed tight. Period. You cannot control it anyway and it is too costly to replace those amounts of heat loss. Like the air brick, you then use discreet openings in the walls for continuous venting and manual control. There is nothing preventing you from airing the house periodically as well. Maybe that's where the term spring cleaning comes from.

You need to get involved with your house. In this original e-mail, Atulya had a blog by @wwf where he talks about 6 lessons they learned in going off grid. The main lesson I learned there is how much their thinking had to change to make a go of it. I had to put my head into reverse gear. One crucial point was to very much differentiate between needs and wants. Get into the habit of finding out everything for yourself and doing it on your own. You are now the go-to-it person.

Yes, this may initially be more capital intensive, but in the long run you minimize monthly expenses, cut them out entirely? Ideal? Besides that, the integrity and independence of your house is much better assured.

cath coffey

7/5/2023 10:11:09 am

Totally agree about air! I built 2 wooden cabins in the Portuguese mountains. One is a pallet cabin...the walls are the depth of a pallet, with board and batten siding on the outside, and tongue and groove on the inside. No other insulation. It maintains a pretty constant temperature. Last summer was scorching, and I managed to sleep pretty comfortably.
With the other cabin (built as a conventional wooden stick frame) I put a layer of bubble foil wrap in the roof and underneath the floor boards...mainly to keep the mice out...again the air in the bubble wrap acts as insulation, and the foil reflects heat...also maintaining a comfortable temperature. Windows and airflow are important. My pallet cabin was pretty strangely built...still haven’t sealed the gap between the tin roof and the walls...but I think the unintended ventilation actually helps. Wouldn’t work in a colder climate.
Mice are staying away! Thanks to Boss of the Swamp for the bubblefoil tip. Thanks to everyone for sharing their knowledge...especially the astonishing Atulya!

Ed Hoffman

27/10/2017 05:44:48 am

Wow! Impressive information people, lets build a house.

27/10/2017 02:18:57 pm

Sandi,

I missed out on Grade IV. Germination needs three things. Food, water and heat. Ventilation is not the real problem, the moulds are. They have the food in dust, pollens and what not and the heat from the rocket stove. Also the moisture from your breath, perspiration and your cooking. Wicking out the moisture from the atmosphere would solve a few things, I think.

The Israeli's have now patented a set up that does just that. Getting water out of thin air. They say it is drinkable.

Willy,
Mud houses are a result of a change in life style, not an end in themselves. Downshift about five gears. Then again the Inuit lived in ice houses. Bearskin rugs for insulation and small whale oil lamps for heat.

28/10/2017 09:16:21 pm

Hey Christo,

Thanks for your information. When I talked about the off gassing of stoves that use fossil fuels produce I was not talking of them causing mold -- I was talking to the fact that trees/wood when it burns actually exudes poison into the air with the chemical breakdown of those natural materials -- which is a major problem here in California with the wild fires raging, it is one of the reasons smoke is so dangerous. Living in a sealed environment relying on the burning of fossil fuel or any fuel for that matter poisons the air as it burns and I do not want to belabor the issue here (he, he, he, but I am going too). But peach pits and apple seeds contain cyanide - a natural thing, but not something you want to consume it will kill you and is natures way of allowing the on-going survival of the fruit as it kills the pests that eat it thus allowing seeds to survive and produce. Same with tomatoes, their skin and seeds produce poisons that protect them from their "natural" predators (as do potatoes) and if you eat enough of them will harm you, they are something that should be peeled and seeded prior to eating them. But, let's face it not many of us do that.

If everyone lived like the Inuit lived/lives there would no longer be bears or ice on this planet - that manner in living is not sustainable due to the large populations that inhabit our earth now. Using trees as building materials is fast becoming non-sustainable due to population growth and hence all the alternative, man made materials starting to be used. Straw bale would not really be sustainable if every person in the world used it as their building material as there would not be enough land and is not now, enough land to keep growing the grass to create the straw to build the house/houses. It is all relative. Actually, if you take it far enough earthbag building would not be sustainable if every last person on the earth used it as their method of building -- we would have no mountains or forests left as they would all go by the wayside in getting material to stuff into breathable plastic bags -- and on and on it goes. Some things are good in the small and not in the large.

I think Atulya has a very sensible outlook in not trying to be a purest to the "green" life style. Any good thing can be over done and detrimental. I think here we are trying to find life styles that free us from the pressures we put on ourselves that create undue stress and in the process also do as little damage to the planet as we can. Also, many of us are on limited incomes and are looking for viable, do-able housing alternatives. Consumerism is out of control, but that is not what this site is about.

This site/group is more about self preservation than strict adherence to someone's zealous idealization as to how things should be. Even good things can be bad and bad things can be good -- all depends on the particular set of circumstances. When it comes right down to it we are looking for our own little piece of Nirvana that sooths our soul and gives us the ability to be ourselves and to tell the rest of the world to go away when we need to. And believe it or not, some people find that living in a teaming city like New York, New York or Johannesburg South Africa.

I came to this site by means I can not remember at this time, but it was based on her Mud Ball book, which, I have to say is an excellent read even if you do not want to look at alternative life styles to what you are doing now. And her on-going adventures kept me coming back as Atulya is quite a story teller and you feel as if you are right there with her as she scribes a terrific picture that we can all identify with in our own way. Plus the excellent information she so readily shares with everyone, and she shares an excellent point of view on different lifestyles and approaches to living day to day that you may or may not entirely agree with, but can always take away some little nugget, but most importantly she allows a place where everyone across this globe can say to themselves -- gosh, we are all more alike than dissimilar our overall goals as individuals are not all that different and it lets us leave our own little worlds behind for a few moments.

And now that I have rambled on -- I will end this little treatise.

Chris, I hope you hang around and continue to share back and forth. Peace and fortune unto you.

4/11/2017 11:49:36 pm

love these comments...Atulya ...I hope you know how much you're contributing to the earthbag knowledge pool by inspiring these wonderful questions and answers. So so helpful.

98% through my build in a temperate climate...uk. Will send pics soon x

5/11/2017 12:03:14 pm

:) Thank you Cath! Yes we've got both genuine experience and expertise coming through in the comments on this blog which is wonderful!

Robert

6/11/2018 03:32:21 pm

Hi.
I want to build a sandbaghouse in a climate where we do not have sun for 2 months a year.
So insulation is requierd.
Our traditional building technique is wood, insulation (20cm), "windbraker", often goretex membrane, and a wooden shell.
Could it be combined?
Building with bags, covering the outside with breathable goretex and aired wooden panels, leaving the inside open and breathable?

Brenda

8/12/2018 09:18:38 pm

What a great site! Thanks everyone. Im planning to build earthbag home in northern canada, cold dry climate. There is alot of fine shale on the site (no sand, it will have to be purchased) Is there a use for shale (great drainage material) in the building/insulating. If I mixed with "mud" would the air pockets be of any insulating value? I'd love anyones input.

I like the 2 wall idea with air as insulator, labour intensive but no insulation to buy, small budget. To live in year round with wood heat.

Thanks/Brenda

8/12/2018 10:10:23 pm

HI Brenda,
You could mix shale with the clayey earth in the bags for bulk, but it won't help with insulation. And for Canada you're going to need it. Earth (RV per inch0.2) is still better than concrete (RV per inch 0,08), but in a climate that freezes for long periods, you need to find a way to insulate the exterior wall. Have a look at this post for ideas.http://www.themudhome.com/mudbuilding/insulating-earth-plaster

Janette

27/12/2018 08:03:07 pm

Hempcrete, as mentioned in Atulya's article, is a lightweight and strong, fire-resistant insulating material for places with high humidity and damp cold (like eastern Canada.) What I've learned is that a frame is built that's weight bearing. Then the design of the house can be shaped and insulated with hempcrete (much like how ICF houses are built - except without the concrete.) Hempcrete breathes, so no extra insulation, vapour barrier or interior drywall is needed. The exterior and interior walls are coated with limecrete. My question is, would a hardwood lattice yurt frame with hardwood poles or rafters covered with hempcrete be strong enough for hurricanes, nor'easters, earthquakes and be able to support a green roof?

28/12/2018 12:26:46 am

Hmm. Hemp is fantastic for cold climates for exactly the reasons you mentioned. Now I'm not a hempcrete expert, so definitely get a second opinion. But as far as I'm aware one of the only issues with hempcrete is that it's not loadbearing. So the entire strength of the structure would be in the yurt frame... And to be able to hold up a living roof, and fend off hurricanes, and dance with earthquakes, that needs to be one hell of a yurt:) Here's an article covering some of the pros and cons of hempcrete. http://www.naturalbuildingblog.com/hempcrete-growing-your-own-house/

28/12/2018 01:23:06 am

Thanks for the great tips in the link you provided. I could create the 'yurt' with earthbags filled with hempcrete. That's genius! And it would cost a lot less to build this way. Thanks. Atulya. :-)

Zara link

7/8/2021 02:52:01 pm

oh I so enjoyed reading this page just now with all the questions and knowledge shared. I found this link through Inelia's chat on telegram and so timely as I am endeavouring to dream in the straw bale or earth home for myself after decades of desiring it. Just need the means, the land and the knowledge !

8/8/2021 01:16:02 pm

Hi Zara! Yay, welcome to the Mud world:) Ah good for you, you may want to enroll in one of my free courses on the subject. You can find a list of them here. https://www.themudhome.com/become-a-mud-home-subscriber.html

cost to build climate controlled storage units link

6/5/2023 05:16:13 pm

Building a mud house in a cold climate can be challenging, but it's not impossible. The key is to understand the difference between thermal mass and insulation and to properly insulate the walls to prevent heat loss. While earthbag, cob, and adobe houses provide thermal mass, they may not be warm enough in cold, wet climates. A straw bale house is typically a better option for colder climates, but hybrid approaches that incorporate insulation into mud walls can also work. Ultimately, the success of a mud house in a cold climate depends on factors such as passive solar design, the thickness of the walls, and the frequency of heating.

7/5/2023 10:16:08 am

Thanks for the shout out Atulya. Back in Portugal working on a bath house and ram pump water system. No more bucket bathing!!! Cross fingers. Will send pics. Much love. X

7/5/2023 01:47:22 pm

Oh brilliant Cath, I wondered about how you were getting on. Do share pics in our FB group (or email) if you have time.

Considering going off-Grid?

Can you build mud houses in cold climates?

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