PWAC Victoria: Carole Pearson, Writing Sample

The Reading Room

Cobbling Together a Home

by Carole Pearson © 1999

Vancouver environmentalist uses backyard project to teach volunteers about building with cob. Published in Georgia Straight, Oct. 21-28, 1999.

Vancouver's only cob structure is located a short walk from Commercial Drive, tucked into a corner of Ian Marcuse's back yard. Surrounded by a dense tangle of overgrown hedges and faded summer flowers, it has taken two summers to build. In that time, nearly 100 people have participated in a series of informal work parties to stick their hands and feet into a gunky mixture of clay, sand, straw and water. Imagine mud pies for big kids and you'll have an idea what cob building is all about.

Marcuse is a soft-spoken, 38-year-old mental health worker. Originally from Calgary, he is a long-time environmental activist who has stood in the front lines to protest against clear cutting and participated in blockades to protect old-growth forest. Three and a half years ago, Marcuse and other activists visited several of the cob houses built down in Oregon. He recalls, "We were very impressed and excited by what we saw. The houses were very comfortable and beautiful and seemed very solid. In our minds, the best feature is they were built without wood."

On returning to Vancouver, Marcuse helped set up the Down To Earth Building Bee, a grassroots organization to promote cob as a tree-free alternative building material. The term 'cob' comes an Old English word meaning "lump or rounded mass." It's been used for centuries in parts of western Europe and Britain, most notably in the construction of the picturesque whitewashed old cottages seen in postcards. Marcuse calls advocating cob as an alternative to wood, "a more proactive" way to protect the forests. Besides, he admits, "I kind of grew tired of doing the activist blockade stuff."

The cob shed/gazebo/demonstration structure ("Call it whatever you want.") project began when Marcuse and others wanted to improve cob building skills they had learned at a workshop held near Bella Coola. He says, "I wasn't even concerned whether or not we finished it. I was more interested in the process itself." But soon, curious neighbours and dedicated environmentalists alike were drawn into helping, intrigued by a method of building where a mud-like concoction is mixed together with bare feet, shaped by hand into loaf-shaped lumps and slapped atop each other to form walls.

Marcuse says these work parties "provided people with a local opportunity to sort of get their feet in the mud and see what it looks like and get a basic introduction to the building method instead of having to pay to go to a workshop or travel up to Bella Coola or wherever."

The DTEBB has grown to include 800 people, representing a varied cross-section of society. Marcuse says, "There's young people and retirees. It's so diverse and that's been another really exciting thing about doing this work. Not only are we seeing the usual environmental activists but we're reaching a much broader segment of the population."

Marcuse figures the shed has cost around $300, including the gas to pick up material. He says clay was easy to find since "most of Vancouver sits on clay." He'd load up his pick-up truck with free clay from excavation sites. The sand came from a quarry by the Second Narrows bridge and the straw from the Exhibition Park racetrack where, Marcuse says, "they gave us the bales that had split open." Foundation stones were picked up from the side of the highway near Lions Bay. The doors, windows and rafters were either bought 'used' or scrounged from people who were throwing them out.

Resourceful and creative people may enjoy the challenges of gathering building materials but it's unrealistic to expect to build a cob house for nothing. Michael Marrapese is a Kitsilano resident who designed and built a cob meditation sanctuary on Cortes Island. He says, "I get nervous when people talk about cob as free or very cheap. It can be. . . and it can not be. The cob itself is cheap but you need a lot of friends (to do the work), a lot of time or you need to hire some labour." He guesses cob materials would be cheaper than buying all the two-by-fours, insulation and plastic vapour barriers needed for a house but "it doesn't work out to anything like 'dirt cheap', if I can say that," he laughs.

And it's time-consuming. Over the autumn and coming winter, Marcuse will add the final touches to complete the structure. "The finishing work is what really transforms the building and gives it warmth," he says, describing cob as a very heavy, "almost oppressive-looking" material.

A roof, likely of asphalt shingles, will be added. The earthen floor will be coated with a layer of linseed oil and beeswax which dries to a hard finish. The drab interior walls will take on a golden hue once they're painted with a yellow ochre pigment mixed with a pinch of fine mica. "What I want is a very, very subtle sparkle. You won't even notice it but when the sun shines on it, the walls will sparkle and be very beautiful."

There's a lot of enthusiasm out there and Marcuse says people have expressed an interest in building a cob house in Vancouver. However, to build even a modest-sized house would require obtaining fist-fulls of building permits and approval under various zoning bylaws. Only small structures of less than 100 square feet, such as the cob shed, are exempt from the myriad of municipal regulations.

Peter Sweeney, manager of the Building Inspections Department at Vancouver City Hall says, "If they were going to build that type of house, it would have to be built under a section of the Vancouver building bylaw that deals with equivalents because these materials (clay, straw and sand) are not listed as approved building materials." The builder would have to provide exhaustively detailed information to convince city officials that cob is as good as more familiar materials like wood or brick. Since no one seemed familiar with cob when City Hall was contacted, this could be an arduous process.

The DTEBB have no immediate plans for any future cob projects but Marcuse says, "I would like to see a cob project held in a public space--a larger demonstration cob structure. I'd love to see someone take that on and we could work together on it. I think it would be an unbelievably exciting project. There'd be so much interest and people would be 'wowed' by it if the project was in a visible location."

If Marcuse sees the fruition of his plan to have better public access to learning about cob building, there could be a strong network of support for people who want to tackle the job. He predicts, "Ultimately we'll have a whole bunch of trained, skilled cob builders so that we can all help each other build houses in the spirit of the Mennonite barn-raisers where the whole community comes together to help build. It's not necessarily an exchange of money but a labour exchange. That's our vision."

Carole Pearson
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Last updated: November 16, 2005 http://www.islandnet.com/pwacvic/pearsn01.html