Aprovecho Sustainable Shelter Series 2011: Inside Insulation Course

Welcome to Aprovecho! This year is the first of an annual offering called the Sustainable Shelter Series. It's an amazing overview of natural construction techniques at a very beautiful place near Cottage Grove, Oregon. I'm here teaching the week-long insulation section of the series. This first picture is of the structure as I arrive to it, a beautiful hybrid timberframe ready for strawbales on the northwall, light clay straw on the east and west and chip-slip infill on the south. Talk about a lot going on in a little playhouse!

Bale infill begins the first day

Bales make great scaffolding too!

starting the mud mix for the light clay straw

this is a great screen system for a wheelbarrow, I want one of my own!

chinking the bales

ramming the straw clay

mixing table

making slip from the nearby pond's pure clay, what a resource!

more mixing!

the forms leap-frog up and before you know it, we've got solid walls!

reed mats for forms for the chip-slip sections

uh-oh, no workshop complete with out a mud fight!

one week and a dozen hard workers... and we've got some naturally insulated walls!

Clary Rose Cob Oven

Welcome to Clary Rose Farm!

A wonderful new permaculture demonstraiton site near Fort Jones, California

As per usual, I'm here to get dirty and show a bunch of people how to make a functional oven out of mud and some salvaged materials

Laying the insulative layer, old bottles make great air pockets in a bed a slip-coated sawdust.

Starting the cob

Laying the hearth floor with fire bricks

the sand dome form

the arched doorway

we also build benches into either side of the oven and integrate existing fence posts into the structure

straw-clay for insulation

sculptural cob holds it in

almost to the top!

Carrie is going to do decorative earth plaster once the oven is dry.

We enjoy pizza the first night!

Raven Oven

Welcome to the community of Breitenbush Hotsprings!

I'm here leading the construction of an earthen oven with attached benches.
We decided to shape the oven as a raven, which has a lot of meaning for many of the members of this community.

Patrick has built a beautiful roof structure and stone foundation for the project.

The first workshop is focused on building the oven.

It's classic cob--all ages get involved!

At the next workshop, we build the wings and benches. The wings have an internal structure formed with wire fencing. Here Sara, the lead organizer of this project, is harvesting sand from the creek... This will work great for our plasters too.

The next workshop will be focused on painting the raven with an aliz, or clay paint. We are planning to do a design with Pacific Northwest Native American motifs. I'll post the workshop when the date gets set.

Until then, enjoy the pizza!