Mud Home News February 2024
New Beginnings: Looking for Land? Limecrete Floors, Earthbag Roofs, and Workshops.
Hello there Mud Lovers,
Welcome to the new Mud Home Newsletter! Now as you know, I have been sending out my muddy missives for yonks (since 2012 to be precise). But they’ve never had a proper place where we can all refer to them. I share, collate and produce so much information in these newsletters, it’s tragic for them to languish in the dusty corners of an inbox, buried under heaps of offending spam. So here is the new Mud Home Newsletter! It still flies like a clay clad bullet into your emails, but now you can also refer to it on the Mud Home Newsletter Homepage too. You can even comment on it!
You may also notice there is a Mud Home podcast. I’ve long been running a podcast for the Mud Sustainers over on Patreon, and that podcast is also now available here for Paid Subscribers. So if you love The Mud Home and want to support it, you can upgrade to paid, and get some insider information and insights, including videos and the audio.
New Beginnings
For me personally, new beginnings are pushing their sweet smelling heads out from the compost of the past year. As you probably read in the last (old) newsletter, from now on my creative writing and personal blog diverges from The Mud Home news. Why? Simply because sometimes I want to write about things other than mud and mountains. If you’d like to read those works, hop over to my other Substack: The Nature of Freedom.
Meanwhile back here at The Mud Home, I’ll be sharing both my own winnings from the past twelve years of natural building and off-grid living, and other people’s projects. This month we have a limecrete floor method, a superb earthbag house roof, and a gorgeous wattle and daub hobbit house. But first let’s start with a brand new article.
6 Things to Look for in Land
This one is fresh off the press. If you’re planning to move off-grid, or build yourself a little natural home, what should you look for in a piece of land? This is an important question because your land is the ultimate make-or-break factor in whether you thrive off-grid or not. A common issue is that if you’re coming from an on-grid set up, you probably won’t realise just how important some elements are You may not even know the first thing about nature and landscapes. So here I share what I’d look for when searching for a special space.
A Limecrete Floor System
Now, there’s no one way to do anything in natural building. It depends on your climate, your project and sometimes what you can personally tolerate, as to how you go about various aspects of the natural building process. Nowhere is this truer than with insulation. I’ll be going deeper into this subject in subsequent newsletters. But for now let’s take a look at limecrete floors.
Here’s a nice little article by The Alliance for Natural Building Products outlining Ty-Mawr’s limecrete floor system. If you’re considering making a limecrete floor, it gives an easy to understand overview of an approved system. I will reiterate. It’s one way. If you’re slapping down a limecrete slab in a shed or a garage, or you live in the tropics, you may well not care about the insulation layer (for example).
I wrote an article a few years back on the Mud Home about making a limecrete floor. A couple of friends generously shared their limecrete floor installation in the UK. It’s super useful. You can read how they did it here.
Earthbag Building (Roofs)
Not all roofs are suitable for earthbag buildings. I wrote a beginners’ guide to earthbag roofs back in 2018 which gives an overview of the choices available. One great idea for a roof for an earthbag structure is what I’d call the ‘independent roof’.
Over at the awesome Natural Building Blog, I stumbled upon this earthbag house roof in Colorado which showcases just such an independent roof. The advantage of building this way is that you can whack the roof up and then construct beneath it, protecting you from sun or rain. Matthew and Rainee are documenting this beautiful project. They have written about their roof process in some detail, so if you’re interested do go and take a look.
The Colorado Earthbag Roof - Phase One
A Special Workshop in India
Last but not least. The brilliant Geeli Mitti have an very interesting workshop in the spring for people seriously interested in natural building. It runs from the 7th to the 27th April 2024 in the hills of Nainital. These people are some of the best in the business in my opinion. The sheer skill, beauty and dedication they bring to natural building is inspiring.
Geeli Mitti’s Enchanted Homes
Shagun Singh, the founder of Geeli Mitti, is a phenomenal woman. Acclaimed architect, natural builder and permaculture trainer, she one of India’s leading change-makers for the environment. I want to cover more of her and her teams’ incredible work over the coming months because I honestly think it’s some of the best in the world. But in the meantime, you can read more about the lovely wattle and daub Tokri Gonsla house (above) right here. And there’s a video tour of it too here.
That concludes the earthy goodness for this month. If you’d like to support The Mud Home, and also access the special Mud Home Podcast, consider becoming a paid subscriber.
Wishing you plenty of creativity, resilience and mud-slinging madness for the coming year!
Atulya
Would love to be able to afford that course on plaster! Mine is failing… lol I broke my hip and hired a kid to help me. I think he got the mix wrong. Grrr
Thanks so much for your hard work and inspiration. I have recommended your book to several people here in Todos Santos, Bakja California Sur