Modern Cob House Building

Build your own mortgage-free home using low-cost and local materials with modern cob-building skills.

By Chris Mcclellan
Updated on July 29, 2022
article image
by Chris McClellan
This retreat center’s storage building features an attached cob oven and natural paints.

Learn modern cob house building for a mortgage-free home using low-cost and local materials by following how to build a cob house step by step.

In early 1999, a young woman from Florida happened across an article online about the recent revival of an ancient British method for sculpting dirt houses. Intrigued, she used her savings to travel to Vermont for a five-day workshop, where she learned how to mix clay, sand, and straw by foot, and then knead lumps of the stuff into solid walls nearly as durable as concrete.

After returning to Florida, she and some friends used the techniques she had learned to build a small pottery shed in her parents’ backyard. Some people predicted Florida’s humid air and torrential rains would melt her “mud hut” back into the ground. Following Hurricane Lili in 2002, however, the sturdy little building, which had cost just a few hundred dollars and a summer’s labor to build, proved to be one of the few buildings left standing in her neighborhood. Christina Ott had discovered cob building.

Hobbit House Interior

Cob-Building Origins

Cob building gets its name from the Old English term for “lump,” which refers to the lumps of clay-rich soil that were mixed with straw and then stomped into place to create monolithic earthen walls. Before coal and oil made transportation cheap, houses were built from whatever materials were close at hand. In places where timber was scarce, the building material most available was often the soil underfoot.

Comments (0) Join others in the discussion!
    Online Store Logo
    Need Help? Call 1-800-234-3368