A California Cob/Mud and Pearls Production
In this 16 day, comprehensive cob workshop, we will show you the basics of building a small cob cottage, from foundation to roof, and everything in between. Rob Sequoia Pollacek of California Cob is a master natural builder with 16 years of professional cob building experience and Samantha Hinrichs of Mud and Pearls is a veteran workshop organizer. These two will make your cob building experience more than just a natural building workshop.
In our workshop, we’ll be building a round cob sauna, with a stone and mortar foundation, load bearing cob walls, a curved ridge beam, round pole rafters, with a tongue and groove ceiling and an earthen roof. We’ll install a custom sauna door and 2 opening windows with window sills, make and install door trim, install a wood stove, hearth and a chimney. We’ll carve out altar niches with stone sills and work on bas-relief sculptures. We’ll also guide you through the process of making natural earthen plasters from our local soil, and we’ll finish the workshop by plastering the outside of the sauna.
You will use the relatively “small” project of building a sauna to learn first hand the many topics needed to build a cob house. You’ll personally go through the whole process of building this “mini” house and leave this workshop feeling confident to go home and build a larger cob structure of your own. And if building a full house isn’t where you’re headed quite yet, you’ll know all there is to know about building your own cob sauna!! A perfect first project.
Starting out by building with stone and mortar using our local granite, we'll work on the foundation for our cob building project. We’ll then transition into the heart of our workshop; learning to mix and build with cob, a monolithic adobe building material consisting of clay soil, sand and straw. We’ll start out with traditional workshop foot mixing techniques, giving you the fundamental understanding of how to mix this ancient building material. We’ll quickly move into learning to mix with a cement mixer, and then finally how to mix cob with a tractor.
Building Details:
Since 2001, Rob has been mixing cob with a tractor, and has invented a moveable form system that greatly decreases the time of building with cob. Here is Rob talking specifically about his teaching and building style:
I’ve done this exclusively for my last 16 cob projects. I’ve made hundreds of batches of tractor cob and have refined my technique to the point where I can make about 5 cubic yards of very well mixed cob per hour. Whether you own a tractor, or will rent or borrow a tractor, I can teach you all you’ll need to know to be able to make your own tractor cob at home, ensuring that you’ll be able to make enough cob to finish your cob project in one building season.
I’ll also teach you in a very hands on way my moveable cob form system, which allows for very quick cob wall building. I created, and have been refining and using this system for the last 15 years. We’ll use this system exclusively to build the cob walls on this building. Combining this moveable form system with the ability to make large amounts of cob with a tractor dramatically improves the speed and efficiency of building cob walls over traditional methods.
We’ll spend a fair bit of time working on the roof of the sauna, aiming for a completely closed in building by the end of the workshop. Using load bearing lintels with a curved ridge beam and 12 round pole rafters, we’ll construct a timber framed living roof, complete with a 2 x 6 tongue and groove ceiling.
Understanding the relationship between a cob building and its roof is a fundamental piece of creating a cob structure and something you wont want to miss. I’ll show you the finer points of building this beautiful earthen roof, right down to the finish trim detail.
We’ll close by creating and applying our own earthen plaster mix, sourced from local clay soil, putting the icing on the cake of our freshly created sacred space.
Workshop details:
This 16 day “complete cob” workshop includes 3 meals a day, on-site camping and daily outdoor class room time. Meals will be locally sourced veggies , with some meat , mostly organic and cooked with care and love. Students that want to stay in a local B and B or in a friend’s home will also receive the meals. Hot showers, composting toilets, a shared outdoor living room and music, singing and camp fun will also be a part of our experience.
Classroom time will cover such topics as fundamentals of cob, sourcing materials, proper siting and drainage of a building, passive solar design, thermal mass vs. insulation, staying within a budget, hosting a workshop, being a professional natural builder and creating a hybrid house using straw bale and cob together.
We’ll also have a natural building home tour, seeing first hand some local examples of cob, straw bale, earthen plasters and earth floors. We’ll also have at least one afternoon trip to the famous South Yuba River, as well as some special guests joining us for evening programs.
We hope you can join us for this very special “Create Sacred Space” workshop!
To register or ask questions call Rob Pollacek 530-913-0846 or Samantha Hinrichs 530- 362-8082 or resptively,
californiacob.com or mudandpearls.com
Register early for this workshop and you will receive either $75.00 off the workshop price, or an early bird package that includes a free comprehensive cob book, pick up from the airport, and a Mud and Pearls t-shirt: a $125 value. Locals, you may also choose to receive a $75 certificate toward other Mud and Pearls workshops. Deposit and registration needs to be complete by April 6th to receive this offer.
Total cost for 16 days of workshop, food, camping, tour, classes and fun $1850.
Updates: follow Mud and Pearls on Facebook