A home of your own for 500 dollars? That’s right. In California of all places, built to your design, out of sand, clay, water and straw.
Geoff Lawton, the prince of permaculture, oozes enthusiasm as he explains his vision of a better future, filled with homes made out of sand, clay, water and straw. Put them together and you get cob, an inexpensive and highly versatile material that could go a long way to easing the housing crisis, reducing environmental damage caused by construction, and making affordable homes a real option for more people.
Lawton is the brains behind a scheme to complete a series of such innovative houses, designed and built by occupants, on a permaculture farm in California. His website features videos that explain the project and the permaculture philosophy behind them.
Cob has been a tried and trusted building material for thousands of years. And it is still used today, largely for economic reasons. Houses built of cob boast a small ecological footprint and don’t pollute the environment. It is a low-cost and easily accessible material that enables many people to build their own homes, which spring out of the earth just as easily as they can return to it some day.
Such homes offer an alternative to the standard housing we see in most developed economies, where buildings must meet all sorts of contemporary requirements, and modern building materials often harm the environment.
Residents who live in such custom-built homes of cob are not naive idealists but genuine sustainable pioneers. Instead of dismissing these homes as Hobbit huts for millennium hippies, we could learn something from them. We could see it as a challenge to incorporate some of this super-sustainable thinking into our modern design methods. So designers, create a house of unrivalled beauty exactly as you want it. And then build it with your own hands for just 500 dollars. Best of all, you won’t need to borrow from the bank.
Of course, the price depends on the size of the house as the site Cob Building 101 explains, along with lots of practical tips.