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.

​5 limecrete recipes from the world’s oldest buildings.
 
There are many builder myths swimming about in the cement mixer of concrete history. One of them is that the Romans invented concrete. They didn’t. They created a specific kind of limecrete, which differs considerably to the Portland cement of today. Also, it’s highly unlikely that they invented the stuff. There’s plenty of archaeological evidence to show other peoples were using limecretes and mortars way earlier. Lime mortars can be found in Syria dating as far back as 6500BC, and in Europe on the banks of the Danube limecrete floors in huts were found dating back to 5600BC. So the Romans were late to the limecrete party. But they did create some very interesting recipes. They weren’t the only ones though.

How did the ancients make limecrete?
This week in answer to a question about pozzolans, I found myself diving down some dusty old rabbit holes in search of the first limecrete recipes. What a wonderful time I had! And what I stumbled upon was so interesting, I decided to share it. The bottom line is there’s no single way to make limecrete. So many pozzolans. So many options:)
 
Huh? What’s a pozzolan?
 
Right, let’s get back to some cement foundations: Lime, lime mortar, limecrete
There’s lime, lime mortar and limecrete. They’re all different. Lime is basically burnt limestone (you can read more about the different limes and how they are made in my article here). When you slake burnt limestone you get a putty. If you mix this with sand or earth, you can make a basic mortar for stone walls.
 
Limecrete
When you mix that same lime putty with something called a pozzolan, a chemical reaction occurs which turns the lime into a cementitious substance. This is a very simplified account, but it gives you a general idea. If you’re serious about using lime, check out my Amazing World of Lime course though.
 
5 Ancient Limecrete Recipes
With that all under our belts, here are five ancient world limecrete/mortar recipes you might like to try (sometimes the ancients used limecrete as mortar, as we do today).

​1. Ancient Egypt: Limecrete Pyramids?
This is possibly the most mysterious of all the limecrete stories and recipes. It’s still highly debated how the Egyptians built the pyramids. What we moderns are a tad slow to realise is the ancients were in many ways more advanced than we are today.
 
Remember those images of all those slaves dragging massive stone blocks across the desert? Well, there’s another theory out there fronted by Dr Joseph Davidovits that those great stone blocks weren’t in fact hauled from anywhere and chiselled, but rather made from poured geopolymer cement. Oooh…
 
Despite the traditionalist backlash, it’s not as far out as it sounds. There’s plenty of evidence of poured limecrete in ancient Egypt, and scientific analysis of the Pyramid blocks has done nothing to dispel Davidovits’ theory. If you’re into this kind of thing, you can read all about it here:
https://watershedmaterials.com/blog/2015/3/31/geopolymer-concrete-egyptian-pyramids-and-a-new-way-forward-for-sustainable-masonry
 
Pyramids recipe (courtesy of the Nabataeans)
Lime + crushed limestone (main aggregate) + high alumina clay/diatomaceous earth + natron salt.
 
There’s some debate whether the Nabataeans were using clay or diatomaceous earth in their mix, so take your pick! But only certain high alumina clays have pozzolanic properties, so lobbing in any old loam you found up the road probably won’t work.

2. The Great Wall of China
The Great Wall of China was built over a long time, and the builders used many techniques ranging from rammed earth to mortared stone and brick. It was during the Ming dynasty that lime entered the picture. In this era the Chinese created an exciting lime mortar using glutinous starch.
 
Recipe (courtesy of the Ming dynasty)
Lime + aggregate/pozzolan (it’s unclear from my research but probably clay or
sand) + surprise ingredient, sticky rice!
​
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2010/may/revealingthe-
ancient-chinese-secret-of-sticky-rice-mortar.html
 
The glutinous starch in the sticky rice helps bond this crete, making it tougher and more durable.

​3. Roman Limecrete
The Romans did indeed create very slick, tough limecretes often using volcanic substances as their pozzolan of choice. Here’s a recipe from the Baths of Baia in Italy.
 
Recipe from the Baths of Baia
Lime + volcanic tuff (main aggregate) + ceramic fragments.
 
The Romans pozzolaned the hell out of their limecretes. Both volcanic tuff and crushed ceramics are pozzolans, and this combo created an especially durable crete.
 
4. India’s lime mortar heritage
For truly opulent lime mortar mixtures, look no further than India, which developed a stunningly rich lime tradition still well understood today. Due to the large amount of analysis and research conducted on so many of India’s ancient buildings (some folk value their heritage it seems), there are so many detailed lime mortar recipes I had trouble choosing which to add. Here are a couple:
 
Thanjavur Palace Mortar
Substantial testing was done on the mortar for this 17th-century building, as you can read in the link below.
 
Recipe
Lime + quartz (main aggregate) + feldspar + small quantities of ground limestone and lithic grains.
For more detail see this article:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjp/s13360-021-01897-9
 
The feldspar is the pozzolanic ingredient here. The use of grains such as fenugreek and haritaki seeds are common in Indian lime recipes. Not sure if these were the grains in the Thanjavur palace mortar, but could be.

Jaipur Pink City Plaster
 
This is a plaster rather than a crete, but it’s so luxurious I had to add it. The Anant Bhagwan Mandir temple in Jaipur is 250 years old and uses a special glossy lime plaster developed in the 17th century called Araish.
 
Recipe: Quick lime, marble dust, curd, jaggery, and fenugreek.
 
Jaggery is a high-starch cane sugar which would have a similar bonding effect as sticky rice. The casein in the curd helps bind the lime plaster, giving it a slicker look and preventing dustiness.
 
What do haritaki and fenugreek seeds do?
I had no idea, so I asked one of India’s natural building experts: Shagun Singh. Here’s her reply: “The haritaki/harad soaked water is added to enhance lime's workability, increase its compressive strength and reduce porosity. While the fenugreek soaked water serves the purpose of enhancing lime's workability and water resistive properties. Jaggery water is added to lime mortars for enhanced binding, but avoided in plasters.” Thanks to Priyanka Gunjikar for her input too!
 
India’s plaster experts: India’s lime mortar and plaster tradition is vast and detailed, so if you’d like to geek out on that, Thannal Natural Homes is the place to look in the south. Here’s a great article to start: https://thannal.com/plasters-of-rajasthan/
 
In the north, get in contact with Geeli Mitti, who run stacks of workshops: https://geelimitti.in
 
Get experimenting!
Sooo on that basis, time to get your lime cauldrons out folks. As you can see, there’s no single answer to limecrete. But the trick is in the pozzolan.
 
The Amazing World of Lime
 
If you want to learn how to use lime as a paint, mortar, render, and crete, then take a look at my simple fully-downloadable online lime course.
 
"This course is worth every penny. It totally cleared everything up for me and gave me the confidence to get started with lime." Kirsty Henderson, author of Portugal from Scratch.

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.

How to use rubbish in cob building and more.
​There are so many facets to the “problem” of trash: building with it, reusing it, what about recycling? How to deal with garbage when you’re off-grid in nature? How to reduce it? Because heck, as a species we have a real problem with the stuff. As with all these environmental issues we also have piles of judgement that tower far higher than the actual garbage dumps themselves. It’s unhelpful because there’s no simple answer (other than stop buying stuff) and many many subtleties to consider.
 
Here’s what I’m doing with my rubbish. Roll on the judgement:) It’s complex, so stay alert.

1. Reuse/Recycle - Welcome to the Trashure Bin
 
We all know recycling isn’t the great eco-saviour it was supposed to be, as a lot of it ends up transported across the world to be dumped in another country. We also all know it would be better to reuse stuff. But how exactly can you manage that sensibly without your house turning into something you might see on Hoarders?
 
Here’s how I do it.

​I have two bins where I shove everything that I could ever possibly reuse, this includes jars, bottles, plastic containers, tins, sacks, plant pots, netting, blah-de-blah. I can’t tell you how many times I dip into those bins, and how often they save me buying something. Need something to put those nails and screws in? Go to the trashure bin. Need a water pot for the hens? Look in the trashure bin. Need a food container? You guessed it, I go to the trashure bin.
 
But...
 
How I keep the trashure in check
We’ve all seen those reports of someone lost in their hoarding habit, with sheds and rooms overflowing with stuff they’ll never use. It’s unhealthy and can end up polluting your beautiful land. So how do I stop my trashure from taking over?
 
Once the trashure bin is full, then it is time for stage two. I reuse an old sandbag and fill it with the least desirable bits of trashure. Those bits go to the recycling. I try to choose glass and tin because I know they have a much better chance of being recycled. I usually need to do this once every two months. No, it’s not perfect. Please show me something that is. Having said that, I'm always ready to improve, and the building with rubbish ideas at the end of this article are where I'd start.

Beware: While trash can be treasure, you might want to erect some defense against other guilt-ridden consumers who will be itching to offload their crap onto you like you're some local version of China. If you're like me you'll often be too quick to say yes, and then be stuck with something that pollutes your land. Be discerning with what you take from other people or your home ends up looking like a landfill site.
 
2. Compost it
If it’s food or organic, then obviously it goes on the compost heap.

​3. Burn it
This is the most controversial of the lot. I use a wood burner to heat my home so I burn all old papers and cardboard in it (actually they are my firelighters). My rubbish may as well keep me warm after all. But here’s the thing that causes the controversy: I also burn small bits of plastic. Huh? WHAT? Oh, the moral outrage! Yes... I shall roll up my sleeves on this one, because urbanite eco-purists haven’t got a flaming clue if you ask me.
 
If there are any tiny plastic pieces that I think will cause an animal harm, such as those stupid bits of plastic they tie stuff up with, or a bit of sellotape, or the scraps from a disintegrated plastic bag, namely anything an animal might swallow, I burn those. And I feel good about that decision. In my opinion the “toxic” gas caused by a finger’s worth of plastic a fortnight is a lot less harmful in the air than it is in solid form in multiple animals’ stomachs.

4. Build with it
One of my favourites of course. I reuse a lot of rubbish in building. Glass bottles and jars are the obvious one. I’ve used them all over my building work, creating windows in the chicken coop or bottle walls.
 
Kristen Krash of Sueño de Vida in Ecuador said she stuck lots of trash into the cob walls of her buildings. If you are remote it can be a real pain trying to get rid of rubbish, so it’s a fantastic plan. You can actually embed it into your cob work and make walls out of the stuff.
 
Here’s how Kristen uses rubbish in cob walls:
1. Stuff all the small pieces (bottle caps, wrappers, bags etc) into plastic bottles.
 
2. Then on top of the wall foundation (usually mortared stones) she lays a row of stuffed bottles. Then, a layer of cob, then more bottles, then cob.
 
3. She lets each double layer set up for a day in between to stabilise. "It's just like earthship walls, except with cob instead of cement,” she says, and adds that she also once worked on a cob house where the builder put an entire broken TV set into the wall.

Please note: You do need to pay attention to how you're impacting the structural integrity of your cob walls when using rubbish in them. Kristen used most of her rubbish in non-supporting walls.

​What did I do with the broken tiles from my roof? I used them as drainage and terracing.

Old cupboards, old doors, old windows etc can all be upcycled into beauty, as Dianne Gungor and Bismil have shown in their work.

Old Clothes
Ah well this is something most rural folk can feel good about. Compared to anyone working the 9-5 or participating in “society,” we off-gridsters don’t usually own big wardrobes. And everything is used until it basically doesn’t hold together anymore. Once it doesn’t hold together, we then cut it up and use it as cleaning cloths, rags, animal beds, etc etc. I can’t remember when I last threw out clothes other than shoes.
 
Reduce your shopping (forage, plunder, re-use, upcycle)
Obviously the best way to reduce your rubbish footprint (and your off-grid headache of getting rid of rubbish) is to stop buying stuff. Really, there isn’t such a thing as an eco-product. If it had to be made in a factory somewhere and/or transported, it’s not eco, so stop kidding yourself. If you live in the country this is so much easier. Every time you forage something be it hay, stones, wood, or clay, you’ve saved rubbish.
 
The worst offender? Get ready to be surprised...
The worst offenders, which are never discussed, are building materials. Even a natural builder like me who refuses to buy anything and builds out of mud and lime and anything she can find laying around, even so, my biggest non-recyclable rubbish contribution is building materials. Linseed oil tins, rollers, paint brushes, glue cartridges.
 
The other worst offender is of course plastic packaging. You can do a lot more about this one though by shopping in local markets, growing your own food, and not engaging in processed foods. Who wants to eat that plastic packaged poison anyway?
 
Other creative ideas from The Mud Home Facebook Group:
 
“I would turn it into art for your home and or garden. I think it's something to study and ponder at night on how to make creative garden totems, fun wall art, flying stuff, steampunk art,” says artist Daphne Roberts, who turns everything into beauty.
​
“Old cement goes in my own little landfill, trying to build up an area,” says Chris Mack in Ecuador. In fact, if you have a piece of land this is probably the most honest way of dealing with it. You’ll see how much crap you have, and you can always plunder it later.
 
“Cement renders and pointing can be crushed and used as aggregate in hydrated lime mortar, render, and plaster. And pulverized brick (resulting from damage caused by said cement renders and pointing) can be repurposed as pozzolan,” explains Claude, who’s naturally renovating an old house.

​Related link - Dianne and Bismil’s upcycled bathroom:
https://www.themudhome.com/mudbuilding/a-stylish-natural-bathroom-made-of-lime-and-milk
 
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.

Istanbul is famous for its spectacular domes, many of them commissioned by a well-known Sultan called Suleiman (The Magnificent)*, and realised by his favourite architect Mimar Sinan. None of them were earthbag of course. Until now.
 
Get ready folks, this is probably one of the most technically interesting earthbag structures I’ve seen, with some pioneering design features such as an oculus skylight and a slipstraw insulation envelope. Woohoo! Yes it’s ambitious, even so there’s a lot for everyone to learn from this project.
 
But first let me introduce you to Xavier Allard, the quiet French/Belgian chap with plenty of attention to detail who managed this project. Luckily for us he documented it extremely well too. But who is he? And why is he in Turkey?
 
“I discovered Turkey while traveling and decided to stay”, says Xavier. He’s not giving much away here eh? So I shall interpret this as meaning he rather liked the place, possibly because the food is fab, and the people are friendly? Anyway ten years on he’s still in there.

How did Xavier become the Mimar Sinan of natural building?
 “No no, I’m not Sinan, that’s Matthieu Pedergnana**”, explains Xavier. “I’m the builder. It all began when I met Matthieu in Ankara. He’s a French architect who was teaching architecture at Yaşar University...I learned everything on site both from him as a building mentor and on my own, first volunteering on alternative building projects, then organizing workshops myself. Eventually I specialized in woodworking”.
 
The Koluba Team
After a lot of natural building experience, Xavier set up his own natural building organisation called Koluba. The Koluba team have been making plenty of mud beauty over at the Sihirli Tohumlar*** permie farm about 130km from Istanbul. And it warms my heart to see earthen structures once again sprouting on Turkish soil. As you’ll no doubt remember when I built my earthbag house back in 2011, most people thought it was a pile of poop, that it would melt in the rain, and that concrete was God. Sigh.
 
Xavier also has a valuable partner in Koluba, Okan Demirbaş, a structural engineer specialising in plasters and stonework. “Okan is gifted with both a sharp practical mind, the ability to work fast and well, and a deep interest in true craftsmanship, a combination so uncommon that finding new team members is one of our main struggles these days”, says Xavier. Oh and I hear you!
 
So as you can see, we have a very well qualified and experienced team here. Good job too! This build is not for the faint of heart.

The Magnificent Earthbag Semi Dome
This stunning structure is 80m2, and it’s unusual because it’s an earthbag semi dome built within a wood/slipstraw structure. It has a reciprocal green roof, and comprises three rooms, two storage bays and a terrace. If you’re a beginner to earthbag, don’t try anything as ambitious or large as this. Koluba had a big team and a lot of expertise on their side.

The Foundations (A New Method)
Koluba did something unconventional with the foundations. Instead of the traditional rubble trench, they just used tamped gravel bags laid below grade as a foundation. “We did this a lot on small buildings”, said Xavier, “But this time it had to carry a lot of weight (the roof is 45tons+), and it managed successfully”.
 
This is very interesting news, and it makes sense, because the gravel bags act like a rubble trench anyway, and if they’re laid below grade, they should serve as footings just as well.
 
Post and Beam Structure
Next the team attached twenty 10 X 20cm posts onto the earthbags to carry the roof. How did they do that? The posts have anchors, or feet, on the bottom to increase the contact size, and then they were locked in by another layer of bags laid over the top.
 
The large roof beams that create the roof mandala rest on the posts, and they meet at the centre of the building to form a heptagon over the oculus of the dome. This is the awesome skylight, and it’s beautifully reminiscent to me of the Blue Mosque roof.

To see all this more clearly, watch the timelapse video.

The Slipstraw Insulating Envelope
For me this is one of the most brilliant parts of this building. We always hear how you can’t build earthbag in cold climates. But if you are in a cooler climate, and want to do earthbag, here’s a fantastic way to insulate your structure.
 
First, a series of wall panels were installed between the posts. Then they were filled with 20cm of slipstraw (straw with a small amount of liquid clay, compressed into temporary frameworks). Finally, the earthbag semi dome was built in the centre of that structure. Neat huh?

The Semi Dome
“The earthbag semi dome in the centre is 4m in diameter, 3m in height. It has 5 openings and is quite flat so we had to add buttresses in the rooms”, explains Xavier. Which brings up a point I’m eager to highlight. Plans always have to shift if you’re a pioneer builder, and you may have to add things you didn’t want to initially. But I tell you what, they always end up being some mighty useful or beautiful feature at some point, as you’ll see at the end.
 
The Roof
The roof beams are connected with about a hundred 10 x 20cm purlins. Then about 20cm depth of hemp chips were poured around them. After that wooden roofing boards were laid, then an EPDM waterproof membrane, and finally 25cm of soil for the living roof.
 
For more details you can see exactly how they did all that in this short but informative video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlgFqNyno6w

The Interior
There is a kitchen and a bathroom, and the dome serves as a living room.
 
The floors in the three rooms were insulated with hemp chips poured under a wooden floor. Everywhere else, the floor slabs were made with a mix of lime and LECAT (expanded clay) and those slabs were topped with stones.
 
The walls were rough plastered with an earth/sand/straw mix, then the interior walls were finished with clay plasters. The exterior was finished with a lime plaster. The bathroom is tadelakt. And all the furniture and trimming is handmade (beds, stairs, benches, shelves etc).

​Challenges
I always like to mention challenges in building, because there is a naive idea floating around the minds of those who haven’t actually built anything, that if you just plan and research and think about it enough, you’ll avoid all difficulty. You don’t get natural builders and architects more qualified and better-prepped than the ones mentioned here. And yet when I asked Xavier about challenges, he was very transparent and offered a long list. For me, this is the ultimate test of confidence. If you have to pretend nothing ever goes wrong, you’re probably not a pro.
 
All the challenges Xavier mentioned were so familiar to me. And they’ll be familiar to everyone who builds. Plan changes, plaster, roofing, and volunteers, always guaranteed to make you sweat. Notice how Xavier deals with challenges, (namely flexibility, determination, and a good old prayer every now and again:))
 
1. Roofing stress. “The roof was very complicated with difficult angles and large parts to handle. There was very little space for error”, says Xavier, who had to organise the placement of beams weighing up to 300kg onto the roof. Yes it was stressful. And yes it’s a good job he’s a woodworking expert.
 
2. Dome moving outwards. “Another critical moment was when we noticed that the dome was moving outwards due to it having too many openings. We took the difficult decision to add several buttresses sticking out in the middle of the rooms, reducing their surface, but later these buttresses became nice features of the rooms giving support to the stairs or shelving”, explains Xavier.
 
3. Plaster troubles. I always say plaster is one of the trickiest parts of a build. It looks deceptively easy. It isn’t. “Exterior plasters were (and will be) a struggle. The building is very exposed to strong northern winter winds and lime plasters got badly damaged in some places. We repaired and reinforced this year but there might be much future maintenance needed at those sensitive points”.
 
4. Finishing that never finishes. “This actually took most of those 11 months”, laments Xavier. “Hundreds of details to care for, starting with the rough plaster phase”.
 
Yup brace yourselves. The structure is the easy part. The finishing phase is misnamed and should be called the punishing phase instead. It will demand every ounce of determination from you.

​5. What, no shower? “Another problem was the shower”, says Xavier. “That little room had been designed to house a toilet only, but the owner asked for a shower on the way”. He he he. Oh the joys of doing commission work. He continues, “Walls were there, a big wooden post in the middle of the only possible spot for that shower. So we embedded burlap mesh in the lime, waterproofed as much as we could, applied tadelakt over and prayed to whichever god deals with plaster cracks. A year later the shower plasters are intact”.
 
I love that they prayed to the plaster crack gods. And I love that it worked:))
 
6. Volunteers. “I can also add that having to work with volunteers is sometimes a major challenge in this type of project. Some people will be capable, learn quickly and turn out to be productive, others will be a burden whose work you’ll need to check constantly, perhaps even redo and waste even more time. It is a lottery”.
 
Oh preaching to the choir with that one Xavier! But despite the mixed experiences, Koluba are still bravely taking on new volunteers.
 
Want to Volunteer with Koluba?
Koluba are accepting volunteers with some woodworking experience this year. It will be a different location, in the beautiful Kazdağlar mountains near Çanakkale. For more details contact Xavier/Koluba at the address below.

​Contact Koluba (and see a stack more stunning photos) at:
Instagram/Facebook @kolubakolektifi
Website: www.koluba.org
 
Other related links:
**Architect: Matthieu Pedergnana @dogalmimar
***Location: @sihirlitohumlar
 
What is slipstraw? https://strawclaywood.com/natural-building-techniques/straw-clay-or-slipstraw/
 
* And if you want to catch up on a glittery piece of Turkish history (albeit glammed up to the hilt), then grab some popcorn and indulge in the historical romp that is Magnificent Century, one of Turkey’s best-selling media exports.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2ZlLE4z__4

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.