Fire-Resilient Housing: Paradise/Concow, CA

This past November, in the wildfire that blazed through Paradise and surrounding regions, Butte County lost 14% of its housing overnight (about 15,000 homes).  More than 50,000 people, mostly low income and seniors, were displaced.  Families are now camping, living in RVs that may not make it through winter, staying on couches, and struggling to make do. Concow, a rural area and ground zero of the Camp Fire, lost most of its homes.

We need solutions - safe, warm, healthy, affordable housing options.  

Cob, a building material and style that has withstood centuries throughout the world, is one simple, attainable option.  Made of sand, clay soil and straw and artfully plastered with lime and other natural materials, cob cannot burn.  And using appropriate building techniques, the simplest of buildings have stood their ground in seismic zones.

interior of cob home

Kelly Nafie (Butte County project catalyst and builder, center), with Lea Marie Monetti (builder, left) and Esther Kim (builder, right)

An owner-built, cozy, safe, beautiful 300 square foot tiny cob home can cost as little as $0-$18,000 depending on design and sourcing of materials.

Under rural housing codes, Butte County is excited to see what we can do, and to consider cob, both traditional and newly researched reinforcements, as a possible permittable material under T-25 building code, particularly for tiny homes.

interior of cob kitchen

Our goal is to work with Butte County to get cob approved under existing owner-builder (T-25) codes and to provide a variety of free ready-to-build County-approved plans for residents to use. Once cob is approved, we plan to then coordinate and raise funds to offer a free hands-on workshop to teach Camp Fire survivors how to build with cob for themselves and each other from the ground up.  

We are currently working with Butte County and renowned earthen building architects for both traditional and reinforced cob on the first stage, to develop and present two sets of plans to the County for review. Traditional/Oregon-type designs by world renowned architect Pedro Pizarro Villalobos have been developed, presented, and are under review with the Building Department.  Pedro and a colleague have donated a number of hours pro-bono in the past several weeks to develop these plans, amounting to $1,500 in-kind. 

We are now seeking to hire an engineer to review plans and provide additional supporting documentation to Butte County. To do so will cost us roughly $1,000. We are seeking your help with this,ith and with funds raised through this campaign we will support the hiring of that engineer.  Any funds raised above this amount will allow us to pursue additional free plans to give builders more pre-approved options.

In tandem, we are working with the Cob Research Institute in Berkeley, CA, to adapt a set of existing plans for a reinforced cob dwelling, based on newly developed code that they are presenting to the International Code Council in October 2019.  If no additional engineering is required, a CRI architect is offering his time pro-bono to help. If engineering is required, we will be seeking assistance with that depending upon the complexity of engineering adjustments that will need to be made. Ultimately both sets of plans will be made available FREE of charge to the public.  So your contribution will help make engineered cob designs available, and cut building costs for fire survivors and others significantly.

Help us move this step in the process of getting cob into code forward and making ready-to-build cob plans available and free to those who wish to choose building for themselves using this fireproof affordable housing option.

To learn more about cob, check out this video by Cari Corbet-Owen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDHE3WnBQr0 

Also info on earthquake and fire testing in North America:
http://oasisdesign.net/shelter/cob/testing/#firetest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJk_AFY4sgE