Versaterra 10-Day

At Rosewater Ranch in Northern Nevada, 30 minutes north of Reno

Number of Students: up to 14

Cost: $1400

Cost for Returning Students: $1100

The Building Project

We will build a beautiful outdoor shower enclosure and an earthen pizza oven. The shower will be an addition to the bathing area we started last year with our 4D sauna project. While our design is not finalized yet, the curving walls will be about 30 linear feet long and incorporate cob, adobe, waddle and daub, straw bales, slipstraw, cordwood cob and other techniques. It will sit on a rubble trench with an earth bag stem wall to demonstrate an alternative foundation system. We’ll incorporate lots of sculpting in this project and finish with base and finish plasters and clay and lime paints.

At the same time as the walls are going up we’ll build an earthen pizza oven at Prema Farm, an organic market garden that’s on the Rosewater Ranch property. To celebrate the end of the workshop and teach participants how to fire up and use the oven we’ll have a rockin’ pizza party!

Overview

This is one of the most comprehensive natural building workshops you can find. Together, Versaterra instructors have decades of experience on four different continents. This has helped us design rich learning experiences giving students the tools they need to become confident earthen builders.

Earth is the mother of all building materials. For millennia, and all over the world, people have used earth to build beautiful, simple, efficient and inexpensive homes. It's plentiful, ecological, and non-toxic. Plus, it can't burn, won't rot and is much simpler to build with than conventional construction.

We will teach you how to use clay-soil to build just about everything: from strong structural walls (cob and adobe) to plasters and light-straw-clay (slipstraw) walls. Because the materials are fireproof, they are ideally suited to sculpt ovens, fireplaces and cook stoves.

The essence of your learning experience will revolve around developing a deep understanding of how to process and combine a few simple materials: clay-soil, sand, and straw. How you apply that in your building adventures is then up to you, but you will the find the possibilities endless and exciting.

What you will learn

After this workshop, you will feel confident that you can

• Design and build yourself a cottage using cob and other natural materials

• Remodel or renovate an existing home, using natural materials

• Build and use an earthen oven

• Use natural materials to create garden walls

• Teach a one-day natural building event yourself!

Specifically, you will get hands-on experience and skill development in the following areas:

• Foundation systems, rubble trench, stem walls, earthbag construction (as a stem wall)

• Identifying the right materials, screening, processing, testing, costs, amount calculations

• Mixing cob efficiently

• Making adobe bricks and using straw bales (“balecob”) and cordwood cob

• Building with cob: strong sculptural walls, arches, windows and doors, niches, and sculptural artwork 

• Electricity and plumbing, how to install wires and pipes in the walls

• Roof attachment and roof design

• Light-straw-clay/Slipstraw: this is an infill technique perfect for code-approved buildings and natural renovations of existing homes. You will learn how to make the right materials and how to install them

• Natural plasters, tools, making your own plasters and paints, colors, applications, how to apply it on earthen walls, drywall, wood, concrete

• Tamped floors, finish earthen floors in natural buildings, earthen floors in existing homes on plywood, oriented strand board, and concrete

• Earthen ovens: from start to finish and how to use them (pizza party!)

• Different design strategies, natural design essentials, passive solar, using cob to make models

• Building codes, how they work, how to work with and around them

• Appropriate technologies like solar showers and thermosiphon hot water systems, composting toilets and an alternative septic system, root cellars, and more

During every workshop we make time for specific issues related to individual situations. This usually includes a careful look at different climates and regions, living with families or in communities, dealing with the building code, physical and financial challenges, appropriate technologies and more.

Kyle’s book, “Build it with Earth: the Cob Pizza Oven” and Conrad’s, “House of Earth” are both included with the workshop and will be mailed before we begin. They will serve as guidebooks for the workshop.

Registration, Payment, & Refunds

This workshop requires a $500 deposit to hold your space. When a deposit is made, Kyle will reach out to you, welcome you to the course, and get you in the email loop with all the details.

Go here to make a Venmo deposit or send a check for $500 made out to Cobitat and mailed to 2055 McCloud Avenue, Reno, NV 89512. Full payments are also gladly accepted.

Deposit is refundable (minus $50 for books and mailing cost if they’ve already been shipped to you) until 6 weeks before the start of the class. If you cancel with less than six weeks before the start of the class and your spot can be filled, we will issue a refund minus book costs. If your spot can’t be filled, your deposit will not be refunded.

Full payment is requested by two weeks before the start of each class.

Instructors

Lead instructor Kyle Isacksen has been building with earth since 2010 and teaching natural building since 2011 with House Alive and the Be the Change Project. Kyle has a background in construction, teaching, and simple living.  He’s worked as a framer, carpenter, and commercial roofer, recently finished building a “green” conventional house in his neighborhood and is currently building another conventional home with a friend. He was a science teacher for 7 years, is a frequent speaker on sustainable living, and is a contributing writer for Mother Earth News Magazine. Kyle enjoys basketball, hiking, reading, and martial arts. 

Katy Chandler is the co-founder of the Be the Change Project and has lived in natural homes and played with natural building materials for over a decade. She is a prolific gardener, certified Permaculture designer, urban farmer, math teacher and school designer.  She loves to dance, laugh, and pore over seed catalogs while cozied up to the wood stove on long winter nights. Kyle and Katy also have two teenage sons.

Kathleen O’Brien started natural building with two Versaterra workshops several years ago and has gone on to teach with us in India, Mexico, Oregon and Nevada. She has extensive carpentry experience, is a certified permaculture designer and talented grower, and has over 20 years of public school teaching experience. She is an avid reader and writer and is currently building her own off-grid home at Long Ranch in Surprise Valley, Nevada.   

Jonathan Vocke started natural building with a Versaterra course years ago and has since built and taught with us in India, Mexico, and Nevada and on his own in his hometown of Baltimore. When not slinging mud he’s a professional musician and music teacher and an avid traveler and adventurer. Every workshop he’s a part of benefits from his musical talents, his energy, and his skill as a teacher