Tag Archive: drainage and foundations

[ May 22, 2011 to May 29, 2011. ]

Lime Foundation
Building Cob Walls
Sculptural Cob
Natural Plaster
Slip Straw

Lime Foundation -
Learn how to build an earth friendly, natural stone and lime mortared foundation, and ‘learn by doing’ as we build a foundation.
– Prep Stones
– Slake Lime
– Make Lime Mortar
– Shape Stone
– Lay Stone

Building Cob Walls -
During this part of the workshop we will learn how to build [...]

[ June 12, 2011 to July 30, 2011. ] For the seventh straight year, House Alive! is offering an opportunity for people to get beyond the basics and experience an extended Natural Building apprenticeship. This popular, hands-on, intensive course is designed for people who want to use natural building skills in a professional context or who want to take extra time to work on [...]

[ April 9, 2010 to April 11, 2010. ] Familiarize yourself with the concepts behind a rubble trench foundation. On Friday night, you will see a photo presentation documenting the digging of the foundation trench. Over the weekend, experience hands-on work as we do flow-testing on the trench, lay gravel, install drain-pipe, and ready the foundation for the masonry stemwall that will be built [...]

[ April 16, 2010 to April 18, 2010. ] Arguably the most important part of a structure is its foundation. For a material like cob, the foundation is especially important because there is no going back to fix it once tons and tons of material is sitting on top of it – it must be done right the first time.Our Friday night presentation will [...]

[ April 23, 2010 to April 25, 2010. ] Learn the basics behind mixing and building with cob. We will spend most of the weekend getting muddy at our cob mixing site, learning how to make an appropriate mix out of the most local materials.

We will be applying the first cob to the structure, and so will be talking about how to make a [...]