There’s a lot packed into our 3 day Natural Building course – students learn hands-on techniques in mud + lime renders, earth floors, strawbale, roundwood building, reciprocal roofs and more.
Most folks that come to this course are there to get a solid overview of all these techniques from a master builder, so they can confidently work with their own builder (or themselves) to realise a natural home, shed, studio or whatever needs building.
Here’s a bit of an overview, plus a bunch of resources for your further reading…
Strawbale construction:
- Creating DIY rubble footings that won’t wick moisture into your walls
- How to set up in-fill strawbale
- Techniques for load-bearing strawbale
- Building in the round with straw
Light earth:
- How to use mud and straw to create high insulation value, very cheap and quick walls suitable for internal applications
Rammed earth + cobb:
- How to use rammed earth and/or cobb to create high thermal-mass walls that are cheap and made from the land around you.
Living Roofs:
- How to ensure load-bearing safety, waterproofing
- Insulative values
- How to setup the living layer + what grows well
Roundwood building:
- Thinking outside the industry standard 4×2 wood approach – using whole timbers to build walls + roofs to capture the life + beauty of wood, as well as use it’s strength!
Reciprocal Roofs:
- An easy way to create a very strong structure quickly with simple materials, that has a myriad of applications from roundhouse to portable pagoda.
Earthern Floors:
- Beautiful, strong, hard-wearing, warm and made from the land around you – earthern floors are a great technique to have in your skillset
Earth renders – clay + lime:
- How to make + apply earth renders of various types
- Corners, curves, alcoves – all the tricks for a beautiful smooth rendered finish
- How to make and apply lime renders for exterior wall use
Not a bad overview for four days! Our natural building courses are here.
And in the meantime, all our Natural Building resources, how-to’s etc are here…
