• Contact Us
• Knowledge
  • About Us
  • The Environment
  • Glossary
  • Restoration
  • The Building Process
• Timber Frames
  • Frames For Sale
  • Boonesville Carport
  • Red Hill Barn
  • Other Timber Work
  • Building A Timber Frame
• Antique Cabins
  • Boonesville Cabin
  • Earlysville Cabin
  • Healing Springs Cabin
  • Milboro Cabin
  • Rocky Mount Conversion
  • Building A Cabin
• Shopwork & Services
  • Conventional Bulding
  • Shopwork
  • Traditional Roofing
  • Blacksmithing
  • Field Stone Masonry
• Pricing
• Blog

Cob is a building method that has been in use for thousands of years, even now about a third of the world’s population lives in earthen homes. Cob is used to form the entirety of the wall structure, providing as it were the framework, insulation, draft barrier and siding in one process. Composed of sand, clay and straw, it is very strong, has a high insulation value and can be built by just about anyone at a very low cost. The process of building with cob is very simple; clay and sand is mixed with straw in batches and is “sculpted” into walls and other forms. Sand is the load bearing material in the mixture and the straw the reinforcing material, with the clay acting as glue that binds everything together.

This versatile material allows for a large amount of creativity on the part of the builder. Walls can be made not only flat but curved, adding beauty and incidentally strength to the overall structure. Cob structures are very sturdy, highly adaptable, easily maintained, environmentally friendly, and beautiful and can last for hundreds of years. It also offers high resistance to natural events such as fire, earthquakes and provides excellent protection from extremes of hot and cold making it a viable option in many different climate zones.

A small studio built from cob in Marmora, Ontario Traditional Timber Work's future plans for Cob Building are to develop a slip form installation method so as to offer cob infill on our timber frames. Also to begin integrating interior cob walls in our passive solar designing to act as heat sinks reducing the need for large concrete and masonry installations. Current building regulations require all residential load bearing walls be engineered structural frame work, meaning that stand alone cob must be relegated to uninhabited structures, but as infill on timber frames Cob can offer an environmental and healthy alternative to many of the high manufacture methods of enclosure in use today.

Cob Pottery Studio

This small building was hand built by James and Beth Beardmore over the fall of 2007 to serve as a pottery studio.