STAVBA Z HLINY | naturally richer

KURZ STAVBA Z HLINY

One of the most important life skills

is the ability to build your own healthy home.

Natural materials, such as earth, stone, wood and straw, are not just a healthy alternative to the conventional building materials (full of toxins); they are also affordable, very accessible, easy to work with and safe.

Our earthen home has a stone foundation, a wooden load-bearing roof structure and curved earthen walls

(a mixture of sand, clay, straw and water).

Our aim was to build as much as we could using natural

and recycled materials.

Anyone can learn to build with earth, in fact, many of us have already done so in our youth.

Building with earth is one of the most ancient building methods, passed down from our ancestors and used around the world in many different climates. It's a wonderful, amazingly artistic, easy-to-work-with, clean, cheap (if not free) and readily available material.

Earthen buildings that can endure centuries, have walls which are a mixture of soil (with the correct ratio of sand to clay), straw (or alternative cellulose material) and water. The sand provides mass and strength, while the clay is the glue which allows flexibility; the straw sows like thread providing an additional web of strength; and water combines all of these into a material that we can form while wet, into practically anything we can imagine.

DIFFERENT WAYS OF USING EARTH

Earth can be used to build different structures like houses, benches, kitchen units, furniture, ovens, walls,

playgrounds and so on. It can also be used for floors and plasters.

There are many different ways and techniques that we can build with earth.

Earthen houses can have many names: cob, earthen, mud, clay or adobe houses.

Earth is a very versatile material, therefore it gives us the creative freedom to design and build in a variety of styles, from luxurious villas and rustic cottages, to unique buildings and structures.

If the structure is outdoors, it needs a roof and/or waterproof coating. That can be achieved in many different ways.

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OUR JOURNEY WITH EARTH

During my research and study of permaculture, I discovered cob as a natural building material. As an artistic person,

I fell in love with it for its ability to form curves and the freedom it offers to designers and builders.

The healthy home environment it creates is something that appeals to me greatly.

Permaculture and natural buildings complement each other so well. We made plans to purchase a piece of land

for a natural cob house, with enough space for a permaculture garden. When sharing my ideas with other people,

I've realized that very few (hardly any) people knew about this clean, healthy and inexpensive building technique.

Many laughed, when we mentioned building a house from earth (mud).

Some said, it’s like going back into the Stone Age. This is far from true.

We are carrying an incredible ancient technique into the future and developing them to create beautiful,

healthy and energy efficient homes.

Living in an earthen home is such an amazing feeling, not easy to describe with words.

As soon as you step into an earthen building, you feel the subtle energetic difference.

It has its own pulse, it's breathing and living like you. All the positive energy and the love that goes into the building process, is reflected back once you are living inside. This positively affects your health and well-being.

A cob house has its own unique story. It’s up to you how this is written.

I’d like to show you how wonderful this material and technique really is.

There is so much to write about cob: its qualities, advantages, disadvantages, how to build with it,

how to combine it with other natural building materials and so much more.

I absolutely love sharing information about this amazing material with others.

That is why we have decided to host earthen building workshops and visits to our earthen home.

Below are some of the photos from our building process.