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COB WORKSHOP
at Rolling Ridge
Study Retreat Community
Harpers Ferry, WV
June 18-20, 2010
Roll up your sleeves, take off your shoes, and get your fingers and toes down in the mud! Woodhaven is ready for its sunroom entryway cob wall to be built. Cob is a mix of clay, sand, and chopped straw and is used to make durable, sculptural walls with the capacity to collect and store heat energy (thermal mass).
Woodhaven is the fifth and final house to be built at Rolling Ridge Study Retreat, in keeping with the covenant to preserve most of the land as mountain wilderness. It will provide much needed space for residential staff to be able to continue to care for the land and to nurture retreat programs.
The workshop will cover a description of the function of each ingredient in cob, benefits and challenges of cob construction, establishing a basic recipe, how to test site soil for clay content, mixing techniques, and hand-on experience building with cob.
- Friday evening- Tour of Worksite, Cookout/campfire, and Discussion of Natural Building
- Saturday* -- Overview of Cob Construction, Demonstration, Hands-on Experience Mixing Clay and Building a Wall with Sigi Koko
- Sunday -- All-Day Hands-On Building and Camaraderie of Shared Work
Cost of the Workshop Weekend - $145, including meals and housing. (If finances are an issue, please contact us.)
Please contact Scot at scot@rollingridge.net (202-330-6874) or Linda at linda@rollingridge.net (301-789-9097) to register by June 1st. Directions and details on what to bring will be emailed to those who register about 1 week prior to the workshop event.
To see our progress so far, including photos from the 2009 strawbale workshop, visit this photo site: http://straw-bale.blogspot.com/
*Sigi was the architect who designed Woodhaven and she has done strawbale and plastering workshops here at Rolling Ridge and many other places. She founded Down to Earth to provide healthy, sustainable design and consulting services in the Mid-Atlantic region. For more info visit: www.buildnaturally.com.