COB HOUSE - Kenya
Cob Cottage & Palm House
Nairobi, Kenya
Welcome to The Nairobi Cob Cottage & Palm House! Using eco architecture, these houses
have been made using natural (and reclaimed) materials. If you are considering embarking
on your own sustainable and natural building project, use this website to see how they were
created with no formal training at all.
BOOKS & COURSES
From a vast collection of Green Building books the one which guided everything in this building project
was "Building with Cob by Adam Wiseman & Katy Bryce. It's amazing!
A practical, hands on course with Kate Edwards also helped set us on our Cob Building journey!
Would highly recommend.
BOOK: Building with Cob: A Step-by-step Guide. by Adam Weismann and Katy Bryce
COB COURSE: Edwards and Eve Cob Course.
YOUTUBE: YouTube tutorials also helped at each stage. It wouldn't have been easy without them.
HOW IT STARTED
1. Purchased 1/2 acre plot in Nairobi, Kenya.
2. Researched methods of low cost and environmentally
friendly building techniques.
EARTHSHIPS: Invented by Michael Reynolds from New Mexico, the movie "Garbage Warrior"tells you about this fantastic building method. Earthships need plenty of space, and planning permission could be difficult. There are plenty of high quality tutorial videos on YouTube if you look.
STRAW BALE: This method needs a level of fine craftsmanship so it seemed
not as practical for my needs.
RAMMED EARTH, CORDWOOD, HEMPCRETE etc. After exploring many green building methods, cob has worked out to be an easy and really successful method. There are houses in the UK which are hundreds of years old made
of cob. Still standing and still beautiful.