Cob Cottage Company

Weekend courses for those in love with fire. Learn how fire burns, what makes combustion efficient, how to build the ultimate in snug, energy-saving campfires, stoves, and fireplaces for cooking and comfort, all hand-made at almost no cost. We'll burn and evaluate several models, build one or two. Course variations:

• Rocket Stoves - Rocket Stove to Heat Cob Cottages by Into Evans and Leslie Jackson has made these incredibly clean-burning wood burners big news. We'll build one (or more), cover basics of combustion, fuels, etc. and light a lot of fires.
• Rocket Floor Heater - We'll build a gravity-feed downdraft rocket floor heater stove. Ianto Evans will be teaching from his new book on woodburning rocket stoves. These stoves are easy to build with scavenged materials, offering maximal efficiency at minimal cost. Many cob builders install rocket bench heaters, piping their stove through a cob bench, making a cozy place to hang out in the winter months. We'll explore many other aspects of combustion, comfort, and heating our bodies not buildings, and we'll have fun by the fire.
• Earthen Bread Oven - Build an earthen oven suitable for a variety of baking needs including bread making.
• Rocket Stove Bench/Mass Heaters - Build a rocket stove bench heater, this is the stove used to heat many modern cob cottages, which you may have seen elsewhere on this web site.
• Rumford Fireplaces - The Rumford fireplace is the most efficient type of fireplace for open hearth heating, and can cost many thousands of dollars to have built. Our implementation can be built with cob for almost nothing.