Eco-building in Poland

Building a house can be fun. If you doubt this, pack your bags straight away and sign up for one of Mr Brzeski's construction courses in the heart of the Polish countryside. I've just come back from one and am still trying to get the mud from under my toenails...

The technique for building what he calls the 'Natural House' involves mixing straw and wet clay with your feet and forming the resulting matted gloop into blocks in wooden moulds. While I was slightly sceptical about the claim that these natural materials allow 85% more beneficial cosmic rays to enter the house than standard bricks and mortar, it was undeniable that it was amazingly easy to make make beautiful, strong constructions with them.

Particularly rewarding to build were the arches. These top most of the doors and windows in Mr Brzeski's houses. As soon as the key 'stone' is in place at the top, any supports can be removed and the clay-straw arch is strong enough to be walked and even jumped on. Another fun bit is rendering the walls, which you do by throwing dollops of clay/staw/cow poo at them and then smoothing it all off with a big stick. The roof was constructed from a framework of small-section timber, insulated with more straw-clay blocks and covered with wooden shingles to keep the weather out.

Houses, built using this system are quite labour intensive since you have to make all the blocks yourself, but are simple, beautiful, very cheap, very energy-efficient and can generallybe made using almost entirely locally-sourced materials.

The week's course was really just an introduction, but I was impressed by the potential for using the simple techniques to build all sorts of constructions in an environmentally sensitive way: mazes, bird hides, teen-shelters, garden sheds, observatories...

To see a wider selection of pictures from our eco-house building and other capers or to find out more about the techniques visit www.thenaturalhouse.co.uk.