Grand Designs (1999–…): Season 13, Episode 8 - East Devon - full transcript
This is a house built out of cob,
which is a mixture of clay,
sand, straw and water and that's it.
Built by a man who is
the king of cob
who has kept alive this tradition
of building in rural Devon and who
is determined to prove that cob has
a future as a 21st-century material.
He doesn't want to build a cob
house, he wants to build a cob
citadel.
Kevin and Rose McCabe live
with their three kids in this
cob house in East Devon that they
built in 2002.
Kevin is Britain's leading living
exponent of cob building,
wresting houses out of the mud
with his bare hands.
Certainly I want to revive cob.
There hadn't been a new house
built for 70 years
when I built our first
house out of cob.
But cob's been around
since prehistoric times
and it's used from Afghanistan
to Andalucia.
In Britain, it's a material most
associated with
the West Country, where Kevin has
now built five new cob houses.
It really is the best thing to
choose for a dwelling
house in particular - you can do
amazing things with it.
Not content with just
preserving the tradition,
Kevin now wants to test this
historic material to the
limit by building the largest
cob house ever.
At 10,000 square feet,
it'll be double
the size of the generous family home
they live in now.
Dad's been an epic
cob-building warrior
and he's just been, project after
project, getting more
and more ambitious and this is the
kind of Utopia of cob awesomeness.
Kevin is a really determined man
and he's very focused.
He's quite demanding.
He's keen to try something that's
exciting, try something
a little bit different,
that hasn't been done before.
The new house will incorporate
some 21st-century
technology into its medieval
cob skin.
Part of the reason for doing this is
to show that absolutely it
can meet all the latest regs,
and be super-environmentally
friendly and reasonably economical.
So where's it going, the house?
The main house is going to
be over there. Oh, OK.
Across the top of this field,
main house going here,
joined by a greenhouse to
an annexe across there - both
buildings will be completely round.
The idea is the roof will just
be set down below this horizon
but kind of flow along in a sort
of rolling hills Devon kind of way.
Nice, nice.
Can I ask you what's wrong with
living in that house that
you've built? I mean,
that's a sizable cob dwelling.
I wanted to show that you could
bring this very traditional
material right to the cutting
edge of modern architecture.
The fact that we are trying
to meet this Code
for Sustainable Homes Level 6 - that
affects the design quite strongly.
Cob houses traditionally...
well, they're just leaky, you know?
The air-tightness will be challenging
but I think it's just
a case of sealing very carefully.
Heating, it's going to be less than
five kilowatts for the whole
building.
Getting this vast cob house
to meet the highest
environmental performance targets
ever set in the UK is going
to be an almighty challenge.
The giant new building will be
located just 100 metres from their
existing house.
To separate the two, Kevin will
build a huge L-shaped cob barn
to house his workshop
and plant machinery.
The main building will be formed
of two handmade cob roundhouses.
The larger one will have three
floors to house the immediate
family.
Inspired by the natural
geometry of a snail shell,
it will be formed by two vast
curved cob walls.
The lower ground floor,
sunken into the hillside,
will include a music room
and games room.
Winding up through
the centre of the house,
a monumental spiral cob structure
will encase the stairs.
The main access will be via
a bridge into the second level,
where the living spaces will be.
Most of the bedrooms will be
up on the third floor.
From the central roof light,
an undulating wild flower meadow
will radiate outwards.
The ground floor of the smaller
roundhouse, or annexe, will
largely be taken up with a garden
store and cider press.
The upper two floors will be
a self-contained living space
to house guests or extended family
members as and when they need it.
Glazed, but roofed sun spaces will
reach off the two roundhouses
towards each other.
And, in the centre of the link,
there'll sit a completely
glazed functional greenhouse.
To help meet the latest
insulation regulations,
both roundhouses will be clad with
polystyrene and lime-rendered.
Finished off with a terrace
and balconies, this project will
fuse 21st-century technologies
into an ancient building material.
But it's the sheer size of the place
that's mind-boggling.
If it wasn't for the green roof,
I reckon this would be the first cob
house visible from space!
So how long is it going to take
to do it all then?
Hopefully...
Hopefully less than two years.
Well, yeah, I think
it will be a good two years, myself,
but it's difficult to be sure.
The walling is slow, isn't it?
Oh, the cob actually is
the easiest part of it.
Oh, "It flies up," he says!
The cob I could get
done in about three months.
This seems wildly optimistic.
And ambitious,
given that Kevin is planning to give
up his paid work to build the house.
They are going to fund
the project by borrowing
against their existing home.
It's a million-pound build cost,
really...
And you can do it for?
I hope to do it for £350,000, actual
outlay, not including my labour.
Not including your labour - that is
substantially less, though.
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Come spring, Kevin launches into the
first stage of this gigantic
project, digging out the footprint
of both vast roundhouses.
It does look pretty massive,
doesn't it? I mean it's,
if it looks big at this stage,
it's going to be really big.
At least Kevin can dig all the sand
and clay he needs to make
cob from right under his feet.
We don't have to move any
soil from site,
anything that I dig out which is
suitable goes in the cob heap.
Two weeks of intensive
excavation later,
concrete foundations are poured.
It may be necessary,
but it's not the most
environmentally friendly way to
kick off your eco-build.
It does make me
feel slightly guilty,
but...I'm not really opposed to
using concrete in the right
places...it just needs to be
used intelligently.
To keep the cob walls dry
and up out of the mud, Kevin sets
block-work on
top of the foundations.
'Now that it's laid out on the
ground, I am blown away by the sheer
'scale of this undertaking.'
Looks like they're building
a bloody by-pass, look at it!
Look, here's the steel work and
concrete gone in for the flyover.
And there's a Roman amphitheatre
being revealed.
It IS vast, isn't it?
How are you?
Very well, nice to see you.
So much happened!
Lots and lots and lots
and lots of foundations.
About a quarter of a mile,
which IS a bit scary.
You've got a quarter of a mile
of cob wall to build on top
of those foundations?
Yeah, quarter of a mile... And high?
..and 20-foot high, most of it.
I know. That's a huge volume of
material, and an awful lot of work,
too, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah.
That's the scary thing.
I mean, I suppose it's
nearly as much as I've done
up to date and I've been doing it
nearly 20 years.
What?!
So, sorry, this building and the cob
within it represents the total
physical volume of every building
you've ever built, in one place?
More or less, yeah.
Bit more concentrated.
That sounds like a recipe for,
for insanity!
It is.
I reckon it's going to be the largest
cob building on the planet.
HE LAUGHS
'Even Rose, who absolutely believes
in Kevin's abilities
'when it comes to cob,
has her doubts.'
So has Kevin bitten off more cob
than he can chew, do you think?
This will be amazing -
if he can actually manage to finish
the job, it'll be really good.
What do you mean "if"?! When!
Well...
Is he heroic or is he obsessive?
He's a workaholic!
He's like, just focused.
And he gets quite irritated
if he feels he's wasting time.
I've noticed...
So everybody on site has
to work hard... Yeah.
..and obviously some people can't
work as hard as he does.
On site, as well as the paid hands,
Kevin drafts his son Ben
when he's not at university.
Ben's excellent at most of these
things, he just doesn't seem
to be fully committed to
spending his whole life doing it.
Yet.
I'd rather be running around chasing
girls and playing music.
No-one is really as driven as he is,
he's pretty insane.
By far the best time to build with
cob is between April and September,
when the cob layers can dry out and
harden in the longer, warmer days.
But it's June by the time the
groundwork's done
and Kevin can mix his first
batch of cob.
Already, he and his boys are racing
against time to get the walls
built before autumn hits.
Dad's like, he went to bed at 10pm
and got up at half-four
in the morning.
On Monday we did like a 14-hour day.
People say he wasn't born, he was,
like, chiselled out of the earth.
HE LAUGHS
Ben adds straw to bind together
the clay and sand.
In the old days people used
their cattle to tread the mixture
together.
Using a digger, Kevin can make
bigger batches of cob mix,
much faster.
It's like a new, totally, new
way of building on this scale that
has never been done before.
When it's ready,
Kevin gently drops the first
scoop of what will be 2,000
tonnes of cob onto the block-work
and the project enters its next,
and most epic, stage.
There is no short cut
with this ancient
and mind-bogglingly
repetitive process.
First, you tread the cob
to squash out air pockets.
Trim off what's oozed out
over the edges.
Beat it to a smooth finish.
Wait a week or two for it to dry.
Then start all over again with
the next layer up.
Only another 1,990 tonnes
to go now(!)
Cob is nothing
if not labour-intensive. Luckily,
with his growing following in the
international eco-build,
community, people will actually pay
Kevin to come and work on his site.
So it's almost a win-win situation.
The more the merrier, really.
Frankly, Kevin will need all
the help he can get,
because he's started
late in the year
and now only has three
months of good cobbing weather left.
'He's got to cob to a height
of 20 feet before he can get the
roof on
'and protect his precious
walls from the worst of the winter.'
Kevin, that mix you did this morning
that would yield how much?
That's about 15 tonnes. A good day,
we'd get two of them done.
On the basis of being able to do
30 tonnes a day, that
takes you to mid-October,
is that all right?
That's dodgy, actually. Yeah, damn,
I wish I'd thought of that before!
HE LAUGHS
You are, with this material,
very weather-dependant.
The main thing is, during the winter
months it won't dry,
because the days aren't long enough,
you know? Yeah.
By late August, however, the sheer
scale of the task is becoming clear.
With only six
feet of basement walls built,
Kevin is forced to take
drastic action.
He's realised he won't get
the roof on before winter.
So he's decided to stop all work on
the house for the rest of the year.
Been nice
if I'd have got a bit more done.
We're not going to put
the lintels in at this stage
because leaving them over winter,
water would track along them and
into the cob - it would just increase
the amount of water on the cob.
Instead, he decides to
focus on the simpler L-shaped barn.
It's remarkable load-bearing,
pure cob pillars are ready to
hold up the roof.
It is kind of amazing
that you can take this
kind of load on a column of cob.
We are using the same idea in the
house and so there is a nice kind of
dialogue between the two buildings.
After a Herculean effort, just three
months later Kevin is slating
the barn roof around a bank
of solar panels.
But the main roundhouses are still
stuck where Kevin left them.
It'll now be spring before he can
start cobbing again.
After a five month hiatus, Kevin
McCabe is resuming his epic mission
to build his 10,000 square foot
giant cob castle.
With the onset of dry spring
weather,
he's putting the timber joists
on top of the basement.
There are, however, two more floors
of cob still to go up.
We've got about 700 or 800 tonnes
to do, you know, this summer.
Which is a lot!
He needs fine weather to dry out
the cob layers quickly
if he's to get the roof on
by winter.
The one thing he fears most...
is rain.
THUNDERCLAP
Unfortunately, summer is turning
into the wettest on record
for 100 years.
The rain's just come
wave after wave.
It's been absolutely ridiculous,
record-breaking.
It's impossible to build cob when
it's absolutely hammering it down.
It's just relentless, and that's
been very hard for him to get up,
come out here, pouring rain - get on
with the work, as much as he can.
Every day he comes home
completely saturated
and, you know, covered in mud.
So I feel really sorry for him.
It hasn't been dry enough
for the ground to dry out enough
to be able to move the machines
around,
and the walls to dry out enough
to be able to take another lift.
Obviously, now we've got
the floor in,
it is imperative to get the roof on,
otherwise it's just going
to be very difficult
to protect the building
over the winter.
To escape the relentless
wall-building,
Kevin's son Ben is turning his hand
to some more refined cob-work.
Dad said he's going to charge me
for the time
because it looks so therapeutic
and enjoyable
that he should charge me
to do it.
It's great to have a material
that you can put a bit of your own
character into the building.
Kevin and his family have now been
obsessively cobbing for two summers.
September normally marks
the end of the cob-laying season
but with the delays caused by
the rain, they're still at it.
It is really quite desperate
at the moment.
They're now well into the third
floor,
but cobbing this late in the year
has its risks.
They are being forced to push cob
to the very limit of its capacity.
The walls that we're actually
building on, just aren't dry.
If you put too much weight on them
they can just start falling over.
We've had several instances where
walls have started to distort.
Making the whole thing move
just because it's not drying out
quick enough.
Cob doesn't have any structural
integrity until it's dry.
And as the nights draw in, the risks
of collapse only increase.
Cos the days are so short,
you get so little drying.
The rain becomes much more
significant
because it doesn't dry out in between
whiles, you know.
I would normally not be wanting
to do cob at this time of year.
Kevin's got no choice
but to press on late into the year,
and get the roof on, if he can.
'But at least this monumental
structure is at last emerging
out of the very mud
that it's made from.'
How are you?
Good! Good to see you!
From certain viewpoints
it's completely epic, this.
It's pretty huge.
And taking into account this barn...
Which is beautiful, I have to say.
Yeah, I'm very pleased with how
that's turned out.
And there's still
plenty of mud here.
You have chosen the very best
year to build this.
Yeah, perfect.
It's incredible, isn't it?
More rain on record than
any since 4000 BC!
And how are your spirits?
Good at the moment.
They're not always, as... you know.
It has been a struggle.
Some days you just can't believe it.
As I was trying to explain
to my sons,
that's what makes it valuable -
if it was easy it wouldn't be worth
anything, would it?
Good point.
Obviously, we've invested
a hell of a lot to date.
If I don't keep that momentum,
and that ball rolling,
this could all be a disaster.
Still, you know.
Well, it could all just melt.
Yeah.
And you're now,
I'm guessing,
arriving at the end of the cob work,
aren't you?
Very close. When we get the roof on,
I'll draw a huge sigh of relief.
The mud here is biblical.
Everything here is biblical,
isn't it?
The scale, the weather that they've
suffered here in the past year.
Even...
Even Kevin's biceps
are biblical in scale.
But it doesn't matter how
physically strong you are,
these conditions are really
exhausting.
So where does Kevin find
the strength to pursue this project?
I think it actually lies in the mud.
Because the difference between what
lies at my feet and that wall
- which is the same stuff -
the difference in value
between that which is worth nothing,
and that which is worth
hundreds of thousands of pounds,
lies in the human energy
and stamina
and commitment and passion
that's inside his head.
You know?
That's what makes the difference!
As they finally
top off the cob work,
the next mind-boggling
challenge looms.
Kevin wants the contours of the roof
structure to mirror
the rolling countryside beyond.
As the project's structural
engineer,
it's Barry Honeysett's job
to work out how.
These are big bits of wood!
This is the only one you've
got in so far?
Yeah, yeah.
So, Barry, this roof is complex,
isn't it? To say the least, really.
Indeed so, yes.
All the way round it keeps
changing span,
direction, curve, shape...
Height.
So every little bit needs to be
looked at and made sure it works.
The supporting structure
of the roof
will be made up of 12
9 metre glulam beams.
So they're all then concave
as you go around the roof?
No, they're not! That's the only one
that's concave, actually.
Why? What?!
Well, that creates our wavy
sort of landscape.
So either side of this
they're straight,
and then after that
they're bowed up.
You can't build a house out of this
material, can you?
And it cannot be that precise,
it can't be to the inch?
No, what Kevin's doing here is
building a giant sculpture,
out of cob.
Does it cause you headaches?
Well, you do find an occasional door
being added that wasn't on the plans
originally!
So then I have to go and check the
bit of wall that is left between
them
to make sure that can support the
load from above - which is does,
by the way!
'I think I might go a bit mad
'if I were Kevin's structural
engineer!
'He's making this building up as he
goes along,
'rather than sticking to
the architect's plans.'
It's interesting comparing these
drawings with the building
that Kevin is putting up.
If you look at the dotted line
around the annex here
it's absolutely equidistant
from the centre.
It has sort of mathematical
precision about it,
whereas in real life,
he's extending it here and there,
making it look and feel
more organic.
And that approach - that kind of
free-style, slight departure
is a mark of this project
and what gives it its energy.
So, for example although that
building there is, you know,
technically,
absolutely circular,
the spirit of what he's doing
is more "wey-hey-hey"...
like that.
And the roof, meanwhile,
is gonna go...
like that.
It's the difference between
architecture as this geometrical
exercise
and land art or sculpture.
It's the difference between pencil
and the felt-tip pen.
I just want to swing it round.
After two years of cob-laying,
Kevin is finally bringing out
the other eleven roof-beams
from his barn.
To get the roof on, it'll mean
the house will stay dry
through the winter.
That's the most important thing
really.
Got a 50-tonne crane coming in
to help us get these up.
It's a critical day for Kevin.
The crane is expensive.
The huge undulating roof
is 22 metres across,
and each giant beam is different.
We've had to bird's-mouth
each beam in the right place,
There's different design paths for
different loads in different places.
I marked them all individually
but you never quite know - you can
make a mistake.
Since he's desperate to get
the structure on before Christmas,
Kevin hasn't had the luxury of time
to prepare.
We were in a bit of a hurry
yesterday, getting them all finished,
working in the dark under lights.
Each beam weighs a third of a tonne.
They've already man-handled one
into place,
but Kevin's decided to spend the
money on a crane to lift the rest.
Much easier!
That way a little bit.
While Kevin is on the outer wall,
his brother Barney is in the centre
of the building,
where the beams need to accurately
come together.
I've made up a central ring
as a pattern for these all to meet.
The first beam slots into position,
its curved end nudged against
Kevin's guide-frame
and its bird's-mouth sitting
neatly on its pad.
But the next one is not so simple.
You need to go to your right, Barney.
What's it touching here?
It wants to go that way. BLEEP hell!
Hasn't got a big enough bird's-mouth.
Kevin solves the problem with
a combination of brute force
and determination.
I'm just going to sit here
so it doesn't move.
Don't work too hard, Barney,
will you?
That's the main thing.
I'm stabilising it, Kevin.
BLEEP I need a pencil.
Has anyone got one?
He was very good
at woodwork at school.
Right? Bang on.
Horrible, that!
I don't want to have to pay
for another day for the crane.
So I don't wanna be doing that
for every one!
As Kevin wrangles
the rest of the glulams into place
he can slowly begin to see
his undulating vision emerge.
You see that subtle curve
in the field beyond?
It's just harmonised with
the environment.
Even Kevin's brother Barney
is getting excited.
It's been cob, cob, cob, cob,
cob, cob, cob, cob...cob...
and now we're putting a lid on it,
and that feels very, very good.
It's a great moment in this
building.
By an unbelievable force of will
Kevin has dragged this building
to a turning point.
God, what a day.
You all right? Good. How are you?
Cup of tea?
Pretty full use of the crane,
I think.
Kevin may have got away with
just one day of crane hire,
but the big picture is
that the combination of such
a massive cob building
and the unfeasible amounts of rain
is beginning
to take its toll on their bank
balance.
I mean, I've never really budgeted -
I just borrowed as much money
as I could,
which left about ?350,000
for the actual build.
It's all borrowed money.
It's all going round in circles.
We're living on it, but, you know,
spending it building the house,
and keeping the kids afloat.
I'd guess we've got about 100 left.
Which isn't going to
get us to the end.
Kevin and Rose McCabe had hoped
to have finished
their epic mud construction by now.
Instead, only the basic
structure is complete.
But at least the dramatic timber
roof frame is on.
Come up, you'll love it.
Oh, up to the capstone,
look at that!
It's like being in the middle
of a jet engine with all
the radiating fins, isn't it?
You look out and see them
all beautifully spaced,
these extending purlins
and then down suddenly in this chute
into this...proper valley.
Oh, yeah, it's beautiful.
The whole thing will just flow
and look natural
and hopefully have lots of nice
flowers on it.
Despite the fact their 350,000
budget is running out,
Kevin remains defiant
that his vast cob citadel will meet
the Code for Sustainable Homes
Level 6 - the highest UK standard,
never before achieved with
this material.
The entire building must be
airtight and super-insulated,
starting with the roof.
So, on top of this timber
structure we've got insulation
going in between rafters and on top.
We've then got, what, a membrane?
Does the roof membrane go
after that?
Yeah, the membrane sits on top.
It's the greenest membrane
I could find, you know,
so we get an A+ on our code
for sustainable homes rating.
Like a single-ply...?
It's basically a type of plastic.
A few months later, the roofs
are insulated with polystyrene and
covered with their plastic membrane.
Soil and seed for
a wild flower meadow
complete the thermal insulation.
I can see little green
shoots from the seed.
I'm really looking forward to seeing
that come on, actually.
And Kevin installs a glass
roof between the main house
and the smaller annexe.
I'm really happy with how this has
linked the two buildings.
Well, essentially it makes it one
building, doesn't it?
By summer, the VERY experimental
phase of the project
can at last begin.
Kevin is attempting to get
his primordial building material
to meet 21st-century building regs.
Although the external walls
are really thick - I mean, they are
about nearly a metre of cob,
that isn't well enough insulated.
All new houses have to meet this
Code for Sustainable Homes Level
6 by 2016.
For me, I've got to show that cob
can do it, if there's
a future for cob, you know,
not just for me but for anyone.
To get his building to meet
Code 6 heat loss standards,
Kevin's trying out his solution
on a section of the annexe.
He plans to cover the entire
exterior of both roundhouses
in three layers of polystyrene
before lime-rendering over the top.
It all seems slightly
counter-intuitive to me.
Why not simply build
thicker cob walls?
I mean, to get the same
level of insulation,
they would need to
be about five-metres thick.
OK, fair enough,
that's answered that question.
But plenty of sheets of this
material to get through.
Yeah, it's a lot.
There's a whole yard-full
over there.
Well, that's enough for this
building.
The house will be about three
times that.
Once the building is airtight
and super-insulated,
it will need ventilation.
Four pipes -
you think we'll get four there?
For the system to work,
a blue spaghetti of ducting has to
be threaded through
the entire building.
Each tube will lead to a
heat-recovery box in the plant room.
This is the heat exchanger
over here.
So stale air from the bathrooms
and kitchen will come through here
and then get blown outside
the building,
and then the cool,
fresh air comes in here.
The key is the separation
of the air layers,
creating lots of surface area,
and it transfers the vast majority
of the heat from one airflow into
the other.
'Unfortunately, technology,
'unlike cob, can't just be dug
out of the ground - it costs money.'
Essentially, Kevin and Rose have now
spent all of the ?350,000
they'd originally borrowed to
finish the entire project.
We've basically run out of money.
Right at the beginning I was
hopeful that we would get it all
done in two years for the money
we had,
and the money has gone out
at about the rate I was expecting,
but the house hasn't quite got
completed at the rate I was hoping.
We're pretty much on hold.
I mean, I will still tick over doing
bits outside of my normal week, but
I'm having to basically work a
full-time week earning money
elsewhere.
With Kevin now only able to work
part-time on the project,
the only way the McCabes can
finish their house is to
sell their existing
five-bedroomed cob house.
Hi, this is Emily, I'm Christina.
Shall we follow you up?
They're asking for ?1.1 million.
Here's a room for your husband
to study when he comes.
It's got a heat-exchanger
in the top.
By mid-August, they've had an offer,
so with nowhere to move
into apart from a caravan on-site,
Kevin and Rose focus their efforts
on getting the small roundhouse
habitable as soon as possible.
I think both corners and over here.
You bugger.
For the position of the power
points, Kevin defers to Rose.
My pet hate is looking at electrical
sockets - they're just so ugly.
It's like in our own house now,
I wasn't around when somebody chose
where to put the sockets,
so that occasionally irritates me
still, 12 years later.
I've got me own ideas of what
I want.
The problem is when hers
differ, which is quite common.
The telly's not going to end up
next to the wood burner.
Well, I think it is.
We find a middle ground.
SHE LAUGHS
More towards my middle than Kevin's.
Low, behind a piece of furniture...
And then you can't get to the socket
to plug something in.
Well, once it's plugged in,
it's plugged in. Low. Right.
Are you comfortable?
Yes.
Next in their push to
finish the annexe
come the triple-glazed windows.
The whole building will eventually
need 52 in total, but
they only had enough money to order
the ones for the smaller roundhouse.
We have got the mobile home
if we're really desperate
but hopefully we'll have time to get
the annexe up and running.
But a week later,
their rush to get the annexe ready
suddenly seems irrelevant.
I just took a phone
call from the estate agents
and the people that were interested
that made an offer have withdrawn.
Fantastic(!)
There'd have been a good chance
we might have been in at least
the annexe side by late September.
The thing is, it's not just
getting a buyer,
it's our neighbours for the next
ten, however-long years.
They were very nice people,
they just decided
it wasn't the right property.
This is a grim set back.
Kevin and Rose won't be moving
into their spectacular new cob
home any time soon.
They say, don't they, that it
is better to journey than to arrive,
which when it comes to building
houses is rubbish.
Because what you really want to do
is to build the thing,
move in, and get on with your lives.
Having said that, Kevin is
addicted to building.
He will obsessively lavish attention
on every inch by hand-crafted
inch of this building.
And do you know what?
Maybe he just doesn't want
it to stop.
Kevin McCabe has been making his
mark on the Devonian landscape
for two decades, building a series
of quite unique crafted homes.
In doing so, he's kept alive
the tradition of building in cob.
That house just there, I think,
is perhaps the finest
that Kevin ever built
and it's the one that he and Rose
have lived in for the
past few years.
And if you take all of the cob
in the walls of that building
and add it together to all of the
cob that Kevin's ever handled,
you get an idea of the size,
the scale,
the almost impossible challenge
that Kevin set himself in trying to
build...this.
His castle of cob.
It's taken two-and-a-half years
to get this far,
but even unfinished,
this gargantuan project
is gobsmacking in its audacity.
It combines the undulations of
Teletubby land,
with the assertiveness of an
eco-fortress.
Good morning. Morning. Morning.
An ironed shirt. I like to make an
effort. Hello, Rose.
This is magnificent, though.
It's fantastic.
Yeah, it is beautiful.
It is beautiful, it really is.
'And it's not just a house, is it?'
It's also a greenhouse and an annexe
for family and visitors to stay in.
And it's a workplace,
a yard and barn,
built with sturdy cob pillars
and that magnificent roof.
You get a sense coming in of this...
What would you call it?
A farmstead, really.
Yeah. A sort of...nice, protected
enclosure.
Are you pleased with the character
and the nature of the building?
Really pleased!
Am I describing it in too
workmanlike, agricultural terms?
No, I like it to be a working
building. Yeah. Yeah.
No, it has a purpose,
rather than just an image of a house
being plonked in the countryside.
Let's have a look round the back,
yeah? Yeah, have a look
round the back.
Very different.
Now some of the scaff's down,
you can see these timbers.
They're going to be
a really powerful part of the
building, aren't they? Yeah.
What colour's it going to be, then,
Rose, when it's lime-washed?
Something like clotted cream.
The thing is, as you come down
around the building
it gets bigger, it goes from one to
two to three storeys
and that makes for an awful lot
of clotted-cream paint, doesn't it?
The perspective is very different,
but we're going to have a lot of
glass here
and a couple of...balconies.
Balconies sort of projecting out
of that opening? Yeah.
I'm struggling to describe
this shape.
It's a little bit like looking at a
government building in rural India.
No! Yeah? Or maybe even an Italian
hilltop fort undergoing restoration.
That would be nicer.
How about that? That would be
nicer. OK, you prefer that, yeah.
It's big anyway. It's big.
'It's SO big I feel like an ant
'standing next to a curly-wurly,
towering termite mound.'
So music room, yeah?
Yeah, music room.
Once inside, the monumental scale of
the rooms and the hefty weight of
the cob walls
give an extraordinary sense
of solidity.
You can feel the weight of
the hundreds of tonnes of earth
above you.
This is the bit you helped with
and that's about... What, this is
the bit I built? Yeah.
Absolutely rock solid.
It's not too shonky, is it?
HE LAUGHS
We had to correct it a bit up here.
All this'll get corrected
with the plaster.
And here, this is the stairwell,
yeah? Yeah.
Oh, good Lord! Yeah, it's an amazing
space. That is staggering!
It's a fantastic space.
Isn't it just brilliant?
A helical staircase will spiral up
through this space,
but always allowing light
to pour down through its centre.
This is cob architecture
at its most awe-inspiring.
It shows what's possible.
I do love the fact that you can see
all the timbers holding
the building up.
It's great to be able to read a
building like that, like a cathedral
or a Roman temple, you know.
Yeah. You've got quite a complicated
looking arrangement there.
It'll look much simpler
when it's all plastered.
I don't think it needs to.
What do you think?
No, I just love it. I love the space.
It's the centre of the house,
so it reflects the shape
of the total building. Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
We use the ladder, yeah? We do.
Yeah.
Of course, every generous room
in this place
will be plastered and painted,
but for the moment the red earth
holds the concrete lintels and the
timbers in its shaggy, muddy grip.
Joists and boards will also
disappear behind plastered ceilings,
leaving just the radiating big beams
visible.
But I'm excited to be able to see
the structure of this place
left open,
like some primitive
Moroccan citadel.
Look at this! Yeah, it's great,
isn't it?
'Above, the spectacular
and slightly bonkers
'undulating wildflower meadow roof
'is actually the only part
of the building
'that's completely finished.'
Look at that roof.
The Starship Enterprise.
Even in early autumn,
the roof is still alive
with colourful wild flowers.
There are some wall flowers and
some blue...cornflowers, are they?
Yeah, cornflowers. Really, really
pretty.
And some mushrooms!
Yeah, there is some little...
Pretty appropriate
for a mushroom-shaped roof.
There's a strange optical illusion
up here,
which is of being on a piece
of floating meadow,
the building has disappeared
completely.
This link...
I do like the way that swoops.
Yeah, I mean, I tried to, you know,
work it out mathematically
to get a kind of even radius
between the two,
but because you've got that going on
as well as that,
I had to sort of imagine how each
bit went in a gradual way. Yeah.
Who needs maths
when you've got imagination?
This project is a triumph
of Kevin and Rose's imagination.
More than just a building,
it's a sculpture
of quite wonderful complexity
and fluidity.
And while progress in making
the annexe habitable
has slowed to a crawl,
because Kevin and Rose still haven't
found a buyer for their old house,
their building is already a monument
to their determination and stamina.
Does that upset you
that after two-and-a-half years
the rest of the building
isn't as finished as this?
I've been disappointed
I haven't got a bit further
with the money that we had,
I was optimistic we might get
further, you know? But...
At every point in the past two years
when I've visited,
Kevin has been constructing
for hour upon hour every day.
And it's how you almost define
your existence, isn't it?
Do you feel kind of addicted
to that?
Yeah, there's a little bit of that.
There is a little bit of that.
And I wouldn't want my whole life
to be as all-consumed as it has been
the last couple of years.
Can you sustain that indefinitely?
Obviously not, you know, I'm going
to die at some point.
HE LAUGHS
But, no, I think while you're
being rewarded,
you can sustain it a long time.
So the actual process rewards you
as you are doing it? Yes.
That's the lovely thing with
building, you're creating stuff.
Life's short and I... Yes,
I want to get a lot achieved.
Human beings that work and operate
at this level of intensity
inevitably require a bit of support
and backup.
He needs a lot of feeding!
ALL LAUGH
And is that it?!
Yeah, I know, I need a lot of
backup. He needs a lot of backup.
I get a lot of backup. Yeah.
Could you ever consider now living
in a conventional house?
No, I'd still want to be adventurous.
It's just enabled us to be very
imaginative
with the space we live in,
and we like that.
Every time you come home,
it's got to bring a smile to your
face, hasn't it?
You know,
living somewhere like this.
It's fabulous and I just love it.
Me too! And I am humbled by the
superhuman, or rather, human effort
it's taken to tread it together,
clod by muddy clod.
You know, every single building
material we handle
has come out of the ground.
It's been dug and processed
and refined
and then packaged into nice tidy
shapes for us to handle.
Except here, of course,
Kevin had to dig
and process and refine every single
bucketful of his material.
The result is, of course,
that the integrity of the building,
the design, partly resides
in the integrity of the material.
But this place crowns
the landscape so well
because it is OF this landscape.
One day it will be finished.
One day Kevin will build his kingdom
of cob,
or as his son Ben puts it,
his "utopia of cob awesomeness".
THEY PLAY
THE GRAND DESIGNS THEME
which is a mixture of clay,
sand, straw and water and that's it.
Built by a man who is
the king of cob
who has kept alive this tradition
of building in rural Devon and who
is determined to prove that cob has
a future as a 21st-century material.
He doesn't want to build a cob
house, he wants to build a cob
citadel.
Kevin and Rose McCabe live
with their three kids in this
cob house in East Devon that they
built in 2002.
Kevin is Britain's leading living
exponent of cob building,
wresting houses out of the mud
with his bare hands.
Certainly I want to revive cob.
There hadn't been a new house
built for 70 years
when I built our first
house out of cob.
But cob's been around
since prehistoric times
and it's used from Afghanistan
to Andalucia.
In Britain, it's a material most
associated with
the West Country, where Kevin has
now built five new cob houses.
It really is the best thing to
choose for a dwelling
house in particular - you can do
amazing things with it.
Not content with just
preserving the tradition,
Kevin now wants to test this
historic material to the
limit by building the largest
cob house ever.
At 10,000 square feet,
it'll be double
the size of the generous family home
they live in now.
Dad's been an epic
cob-building warrior
and he's just been, project after
project, getting more
and more ambitious and this is the
kind of Utopia of cob awesomeness.
Kevin is a really determined man
and he's very focused.
He's quite demanding.
He's keen to try something that's
exciting, try something
a little bit different,
that hasn't been done before.
The new house will incorporate
some 21st-century
technology into its medieval
cob skin.
Part of the reason for doing this is
to show that absolutely it
can meet all the latest regs,
and be super-environmentally
friendly and reasonably economical.
So where's it going, the house?
The main house is going to
be over there. Oh, OK.
Across the top of this field,
main house going here,
joined by a greenhouse to
an annexe across there - both
buildings will be completely round.
The idea is the roof will just
be set down below this horizon
but kind of flow along in a sort
of rolling hills Devon kind of way.
Nice, nice.
Can I ask you what's wrong with
living in that house that
you've built? I mean,
that's a sizable cob dwelling.
I wanted to show that you could
bring this very traditional
material right to the cutting
edge of modern architecture.
The fact that we are trying
to meet this Code
for Sustainable Homes Level 6 - that
affects the design quite strongly.
Cob houses traditionally...
well, they're just leaky, you know?
The air-tightness will be challenging
but I think it's just
a case of sealing very carefully.
Heating, it's going to be less than
five kilowatts for the whole
building.
Getting this vast cob house
to meet the highest
environmental performance targets
ever set in the UK is going
to be an almighty challenge.
The giant new building will be
located just 100 metres from their
existing house.
To separate the two, Kevin will
build a huge L-shaped cob barn
to house his workshop
and plant machinery.
The main building will be formed
of two handmade cob roundhouses.
The larger one will have three
floors to house the immediate
family.
Inspired by the natural
geometry of a snail shell,
it will be formed by two vast
curved cob walls.
The lower ground floor,
sunken into the hillside,
will include a music room
and games room.
Winding up through
the centre of the house,
a monumental spiral cob structure
will encase the stairs.
The main access will be via
a bridge into the second level,
where the living spaces will be.
Most of the bedrooms will be
up on the third floor.
From the central roof light,
an undulating wild flower meadow
will radiate outwards.
The ground floor of the smaller
roundhouse, or annexe, will
largely be taken up with a garden
store and cider press.
The upper two floors will be
a self-contained living space
to house guests or extended family
members as and when they need it.
Glazed, but roofed sun spaces will
reach off the two roundhouses
towards each other.
And, in the centre of the link,
there'll sit a completely
glazed functional greenhouse.
To help meet the latest
insulation regulations,
both roundhouses will be clad with
polystyrene and lime-rendered.
Finished off with a terrace
and balconies, this project will
fuse 21st-century technologies
into an ancient building material.
But it's the sheer size of the place
that's mind-boggling.
If it wasn't for the green roof,
I reckon this would be the first cob
house visible from space!
So how long is it going to take
to do it all then?
Hopefully...
Hopefully less than two years.
Well, yeah, I think
it will be a good two years, myself,
but it's difficult to be sure.
The walling is slow, isn't it?
Oh, the cob actually is
the easiest part of it.
Oh, "It flies up," he says!
The cob I could get
done in about three months.
This seems wildly optimistic.
And ambitious,
given that Kevin is planning to give
up his paid work to build the house.
They are going to fund
the project by borrowing
against their existing home.
It's a million-pound build cost,
really...
And you can do it for?
I hope to do it for £350,000, actual
outlay, not including my labour.
Not including your labour - that is
substantially less, though.
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Come spring, Kevin launches into the
first stage of this gigantic
project, digging out the footprint
of both vast roundhouses.
It does look pretty massive,
doesn't it? I mean it's,
if it looks big at this stage,
it's going to be really big.
At least Kevin can dig all the sand
and clay he needs to make
cob from right under his feet.
We don't have to move any
soil from site,
anything that I dig out which is
suitable goes in the cob heap.
Two weeks of intensive
excavation later,
concrete foundations are poured.
It may be necessary,
but it's not the most
environmentally friendly way to
kick off your eco-build.
It does make me
feel slightly guilty,
but...I'm not really opposed to
using concrete in the right
places...it just needs to be
used intelligently.
To keep the cob walls dry
and up out of the mud, Kevin sets
block-work on
top of the foundations.
'Now that it's laid out on the
ground, I am blown away by the sheer
'scale of this undertaking.'
Looks like they're building
a bloody by-pass, look at it!
Look, here's the steel work and
concrete gone in for the flyover.
And there's a Roman amphitheatre
being revealed.
It IS vast, isn't it?
How are you?
Very well, nice to see you.
So much happened!
Lots and lots and lots
and lots of foundations.
About a quarter of a mile,
which IS a bit scary.
You've got a quarter of a mile
of cob wall to build on top
of those foundations?
Yeah, quarter of a mile... And high?
..and 20-foot high, most of it.
I know. That's a huge volume of
material, and an awful lot of work,
too, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah.
That's the scary thing.
I mean, I suppose it's
nearly as much as I've done
up to date and I've been doing it
nearly 20 years.
What?!
So, sorry, this building and the cob
within it represents the total
physical volume of every building
you've ever built, in one place?
More or less, yeah.
Bit more concentrated.
That sounds like a recipe for,
for insanity!
It is.
I reckon it's going to be the largest
cob building on the planet.
HE LAUGHS
'Even Rose, who absolutely believes
in Kevin's abilities
'when it comes to cob,
has her doubts.'
So has Kevin bitten off more cob
than he can chew, do you think?
This will be amazing -
if he can actually manage to finish
the job, it'll be really good.
What do you mean "if"?! When!
Well...
Is he heroic or is he obsessive?
He's a workaholic!
He's like, just focused.
And he gets quite irritated
if he feels he's wasting time.
I've noticed...
So everybody on site has
to work hard... Yeah.
..and obviously some people can't
work as hard as he does.
On site, as well as the paid hands,
Kevin drafts his son Ben
when he's not at university.
Ben's excellent at most of these
things, he just doesn't seem
to be fully committed to
spending his whole life doing it.
Yet.
I'd rather be running around chasing
girls and playing music.
No-one is really as driven as he is,
he's pretty insane.
By far the best time to build with
cob is between April and September,
when the cob layers can dry out and
harden in the longer, warmer days.
But it's June by the time the
groundwork's done
and Kevin can mix his first
batch of cob.
Already, he and his boys are racing
against time to get the walls
built before autumn hits.
Dad's like, he went to bed at 10pm
and got up at half-four
in the morning.
On Monday we did like a 14-hour day.
People say he wasn't born, he was,
like, chiselled out of the earth.
HE LAUGHS
Ben adds straw to bind together
the clay and sand.
In the old days people used
their cattle to tread the mixture
together.
Using a digger, Kevin can make
bigger batches of cob mix,
much faster.
It's like a new, totally, new
way of building on this scale that
has never been done before.
When it's ready,
Kevin gently drops the first
scoop of what will be 2,000
tonnes of cob onto the block-work
and the project enters its next,
and most epic, stage.
There is no short cut
with this ancient
and mind-bogglingly
repetitive process.
First, you tread the cob
to squash out air pockets.
Trim off what's oozed out
over the edges.
Beat it to a smooth finish.
Wait a week or two for it to dry.
Then start all over again with
the next layer up.
Only another 1,990 tonnes
to go now(!)
Cob is nothing
if not labour-intensive. Luckily,
with his growing following in the
international eco-build,
community, people will actually pay
Kevin to come and work on his site.
So it's almost a win-win situation.
The more the merrier, really.
Frankly, Kevin will need all
the help he can get,
because he's started
late in the year
and now only has three
months of good cobbing weather left.
'He's got to cob to a height
of 20 feet before he can get the
roof on
'and protect his precious
walls from the worst of the winter.'
Kevin, that mix you did this morning
that would yield how much?
That's about 15 tonnes. A good day,
we'd get two of them done.
On the basis of being able to do
30 tonnes a day, that
takes you to mid-October,
is that all right?
That's dodgy, actually. Yeah, damn,
I wish I'd thought of that before!
HE LAUGHS
You are, with this material,
very weather-dependant.
The main thing is, during the winter
months it won't dry,
because the days aren't long enough,
you know? Yeah.
By late August, however, the sheer
scale of the task is becoming clear.
With only six
feet of basement walls built,
Kevin is forced to take
drastic action.
He's realised he won't get
the roof on before winter.
So he's decided to stop all work on
the house for the rest of the year.
Been nice
if I'd have got a bit more done.
We're not going to put
the lintels in at this stage
because leaving them over winter,
water would track along them and
into the cob - it would just increase
the amount of water on the cob.
Instead, he decides to
focus on the simpler L-shaped barn.
It's remarkable load-bearing,
pure cob pillars are ready to
hold up the roof.
It is kind of amazing
that you can take this
kind of load on a column of cob.
We are using the same idea in the
house and so there is a nice kind of
dialogue between the two buildings.
After a Herculean effort, just three
months later Kevin is slating
the barn roof around a bank
of solar panels.
But the main roundhouses are still
stuck where Kevin left them.
It'll now be spring before he can
start cobbing again.
After a five month hiatus, Kevin
McCabe is resuming his epic mission
to build his 10,000 square foot
giant cob castle.
With the onset of dry spring
weather,
he's putting the timber joists
on top of the basement.
There are, however, two more floors
of cob still to go up.
We've got about 700 or 800 tonnes
to do, you know, this summer.
Which is a lot!
He needs fine weather to dry out
the cob layers quickly
if he's to get the roof on
by winter.
The one thing he fears most...
is rain.
THUNDERCLAP
Unfortunately, summer is turning
into the wettest on record
for 100 years.
The rain's just come
wave after wave.
It's been absolutely ridiculous,
record-breaking.
It's impossible to build cob when
it's absolutely hammering it down.
It's just relentless, and that's
been very hard for him to get up,
come out here, pouring rain - get on
with the work, as much as he can.
Every day he comes home
completely saturated
and, you know, covered in mud.
So I feel really sorry for him.
It hasn't been dry enough
for the ground to dry out enough
to be able to move the machines
around,
and the walls to dry out enough
to be able to take another lift.
Obviously, now we've got
the floor in,
it is imperative to get the roof on,
otherwise it's just going
to be very difficult
to protect the building
over the winter.
To escape the relentless
wall-building,
Kevin's son Ben is turning his hand
to some more refined cob-work.
Dad said he's going to charge me
for the time
because it looks so therapeutic
and enjoyable
that he should charge me
to do it.
It's great to have a material
that you can put a bit of your own
character into the building.
Kevin and his family have now been
obsessively cobbing for two summers.
September normally marks
the end of the cob-laying season
but with the delays caused by
the rain, they're still at it.
It is really quite desperate
at the moment.
They're now well into the third
floor,
but cobbing this late in the year
has its risks.
They are being forced to push cob
to the very limit of its capacity.
The walls that we're actually
building on, just aren't dry.
If you put too much weight on them
they can just start falling over.
We've had several instances where
walls have started to distort.
Making the whole thing move
just because it's not drying out
quick enough.
Cob doesn't have any structural
integrity until it's dry.
And as the nights draw in, the risks
of collapse only increase.
Cos the days are so short,
you get so little drying.
The rain becomes much more
significant
because it doesn't dry out in between
whiles, you know.
I would normally not be wanting
to do cob at this time of year.
Kevin's got no choice
but to press on late into the year,
and get the roof on, if he can.
'But at least this monumental
structure is at last emerging
out of the very mud
that it's made from.'
How are you?
Good! Good to see you!
From certain viewpoints
it's completely epic, this.
It's pretty huge.
And taking into account this barn...
Which is beautiful, I have to say.
Yeah, I'm very pleased with how
that's turned out.
And there's still
plenty of mud here.
You have chosen the very best
year to build this.
Yeah, perfect.
It's incredible, isn't it?
More rain on record than
any since 4000 BC!
And how are your spirits?
Good at the moment.
They're not always, as... you know.
It has been a struggle.
Some days you just can't believe it.
As I was trying to explain
to my sons,
that's what makes it valuable -
if it was easy it wouldn't be worth
anything, would it?
Good point.
Obviously, we've invested
a hell of a lot to date.
If I don't keep that momentum,
and that ball rolling,
this could all be a disaster.
Still, you know.
Well, it could all just melt.
Yeah.
And you're now,
I'm guessing,
arriving at the end of the cob work,
aren't you?
Very close. When we get the roof on,
I'll draw a huge sigh of relief.
The mud here is biblical.
Everything here is biblical,
isn't it?
The scale, the weather that they've
suffered here in the past year.
Even...
Even Kevin's biceps
are biblical in scale.
But it doesn't matter how
physically strong you are,
these conditions are really
exhausting.
So where does Kevin find
the strength to pursue this project?
I think it actually lies in the mud.
Because the difference between what
lies at my feet and that wall
- which is the same stuff -
the difference in value
between that which is worth nothing,
and that which is worth
hundreds of thousands of pounds,
lies in the human energy
and stamina
and commitment and passion
that's inside his head.
You know?
That's what makes the difference!
As they finally
top off the cob work,
the next mind-boggling
challenge looms.
Kevin wants the contours of the roof
structure to mirror
the rolling countryside beyond.
As the project's structural
engineer,
it's Barry Honeysett's job
to work out how.
These are big bits of wood!
This is the only one you've
got in so far?
Yeah, yeah.
So, Barry, this roof is complex,
isn't it? To say the least, really.
Indeed so, yes.
All the way round it keeps
changing span,
direction, curve, shape...
Height.
So every little bit needs to be
looked at and made sure it works.
The supporting structure
of the roof
will be made up of 12
9 metre glulam beams.
So they're all then concave
as you go around the roof?
No, they're not! That's the only one
that's concave, actually.
Why? What?!
Well, that creates our wavy
sort of landscape.
So either side of this
they're straight,
and then after that
they're bowed up.
You can't build a house out of this
material, can you?
And it cannot be that precise,
it can't be to the inch?
No, what Kevin's doing here is
building a giant sculpture,
out of cob.
Does it cause you headaches?
Well, you do find an occasional door
being added that wasn't on the plans
originally!
So then I have to go and check the
bit of wall that is left between
them
to make sure that can support the
load from above - which is does,
by the way!
'I think I might go a bit mad
'if I were Kevin's structural
engineer!
'He's making this building up as he
goes along,
'rather than sticking to
the architect's plans.'
It's interesting comparing these
drawings with the building
that Kevin is putting up.
If you look at the dotted line
around the annex here
it's absolutely equidistant
from the centre.
It has sort of mathematical
precision about it,
whereas in real life,
he's extending it here and there,
making it look and feel
more organic.
And that approach - that kind of
free-style, slight departure
is a mark of this project
and what gives it its energy.
So, for example although that
building there is, you know,
technically,
absolutely circular,
the spirit of what he's doing
is more "wey-hey-hey"...
like that.
And the roof, meanwhile,
is gonna go...
like that.
It's the difference between
architecture as this geometrical
exercise
and land art or sculpture.
It's the difference between pencil
and the felt-tip pen.
I just want to swing it round.
After two years of cob-laying,
Kevin is finally bringing out
the other eleven roof-beams
from his barn.
To get the roof on, it'll mean
the house will stay dry
through the winter.
That's the most important thing
really.
Got a 50-tonne crane coming in
to help us get these up.
It's a critical day for Kevin.
The crane is expensive.
The huge undulating roof
is 22 metres across,
and each giant beam is different.
We've had to bird's-mouth
each beam in the right place,
There's different design paths for
different loads in different places.
I marked them all individually
but you never quite know - you can
make a mistake.
Since he's desperate to get
the structure on before Christmas,
Kevin hasn't had the luxury of time
to prepare.
We were in a bit of a hurry
yesterday, getting them all finished,
working in the dark under lights.
Each beam weighs a third of a tonne.
They've already man-handled one
into place,
but Kevin's decided to spend the
money on a crane to lift the rest.
Much easier!
That way a little bit.
While Kevin is on the outer wall,
his brother Barney is in the centre
of the building,
where the beams need to accurately
come together.
I've made up a central ring
as a pattern for these all to meet.
The first beam slots into position,
its curved end nudged against
Kevin's guide-frame
and its bird's-mouth sitting
neatly on its pad.
But the next one is not so simple.
You need to go to your right, Barney.
What's it touching here?
It wants to go that way. BLEEP hell!
Hasn't got a big enough bird's-mouth.
Kevin solves the problem with
a combination of brute force
and determination.
I'm just going to sit here
so it doesn't move.
Don't work too hard, Barney,
will you?
That's the main thing.
I'm stabilising it, Kevin.
BLEEP I need a pencil.
Has anyone got one?
He was very good
at woodwork at school.
Right? Bang on.
Horrible, that!
I don't want to have to pay
for another day for the crane.
So I don't wanna be doing that
for every one!
As Kevin wrangles
the rest of the glulams into place
he can slowly begin to see
his undulating vision emerge.
You see that subtle curve
in the field beyond?
It's just harmonised with
the environment.
Even Kevin's brother Barney
is getting excited.
It's been cob, cob, cob, cob,
cob, cob, cob, cob...cob...
and now we're putting a lid on it,
and that feels very, very good.
It's a great moment in this
building.
By an unbelievable force of will
Kevin has dragged this building
to a turning point.
God, what a day.
You all right? Good. How are you?
Cup of tea?
Pretty full use of the crane,
I think.
Kevin may have got away with
just one day of crane hire,
but the big picture is
that the combination of such
a massive cob building
and the unfeasible amounts of rain
is beginning
to take its toll on their bank
balance.
I mean, I've never really budgeted -
I just borrowed as much money
as I could,
which left about ?350,000
for the actual build.
It's all borrowed money.
It's all going round in circles.
We're living on it, but, you know,
spending it building the house,
and keeping the kids afloat.
I'd guess we've got about 100 left.
Which isn't going to
get us to the end.
Kevin and Rose McCabe had hoped
to have finished
their epic mud construction by now.
Instead, only the basic
structure is complete.
But at least the dramatic timber
roof frame is on.
Come up, you'll love it.
Oh, up to the capstone,
look at that!
It's like being in the middle
of a jet engine with all
the radiating fins, isn't it?
You look out and see them
all beautifully spaced,
these extending purlins
and then down suddenly in this chute
into this...proper valley.
Oh, yeah, it's beautiful.
The whole thing will just flow
and look natural
and hopefully have lots of nice
flowers on it.
Despite the fact their 350,000
budget is running out,
Kevin remains defiant
that his vast cob citadel will meet
the Code for Sustainable Homes
Level 6 - the highest UK standard,
never before achieved with
this material.
The entire building must be
airtight and super-insulated,
starting with the roof.
So, on top of this timber
structure we've got insulation
going in between rafters and on top.
We've then got, what, a membrane?
Does the roof membrane go
after that?
Yeah, the membrane sits on top.
It's the greenest membrane
I could find, you know,
so we get an A+ on our code
for sustainable homes rating.
Like a single-ply...?
It's basically a type of plastic.
A few months later, the roofs
are insulated with polystyrene and
covered with their plastic membrane.
Soil and seed for
a wild flower meadow
complete the thermal insulation.
I can see little green
shoots from the seed.
I'm really looking forward to seeing
that come on, actually.
And Kevin installs a glass
roof between the main house
and the smaller annexe.
I'm really happy with how this has
linked the two buildings.
Well, essentially it makes it one
building, doesn't it?
By summer, the VERY experimental
phase of the project
can at last begin.
Kevin is attempting to get
his primordial building material
to meet 21st-century building regs.
Although the external walls
are really thick - I mean, they are
about nearly a metre of cob,
that isn't well enough insulated.
All new houses have to meet this
Code for Sustainable Homes Level
6 by 2016.
For me, I've got to show that cob
can do it, if there's
a future for cob, you know,
not just for me but for anyone.
To get his building to meet
Code 6 heat loss standards,
Kevin's trying out his solution
on a section of the annexe.
He plans to cover the entire
exterior of both roundhouses
in three layers of polystyrene
before lime-rendering over the top.
It all seems slightly
counter-intuitive to me.
Why not simply build
thicker cob walls?
I mean, to get the same
level of insulation,
they would need to
be about five-metres thick.
OK, fair enough,
that's answered that question.
But plenty of sheets of this
material to get through.
Yeah, it's a lot.
There's a whole yard-full
over there.
Well, that's enough for this
building.
The house will be about three
times that.
Once the building is airtight
and super-insulated,
it will need ventilation.
Four pipes -
you think we'll get four there?
For the system to work,
a blue spaghetti of ducting has to
be threaded through
the entire building.
Each tube will lead to a
heat-recovery box in the plant room.
This is the heat exchanger
over here.
So stale air from the bathrooms
and kitchen will come through here
and then get blown outside
the building,
and then the cool,
fresh air comes in here.
The key is the separation
of the air layers,
creating lots of surface area,
and it transfers the vast majority
of the heat from one airflow into
the other.
'Unfortunately, technology,
'unlike cob, can't just be dug
out of the ground - it costs money.'
Essentially, Kevin and Rose have now
spent all of the ?350,000
they'd originally borrowed to
finish the entire project.
We've basically run out of money.
Right at the beginning I was
hopeful that we would get it all
done in two years for the money
we had,
and the money has gone out
at about the rate I was expecting,
but the house hasn't quite got
completed at the rate I was hoping.
We're pretty much on hold.
I mean, I will still tick over doing
bits outside of my normal week, but
I'm having to basically work a
full-time week earning money
elsewhere.
With Kevin now only able to work
part-time on the project,
the only way the McCabes can
finish their house is to
sell their existing
five-bedroomed cob house.
Hi, this is Emily, I'm Christina.
Shall we follow you up?
They're asking for ?1.1 million.
Here's a room for your husband
to study when he comes.
It's got a heat-exchanger
in the top.
By mid-August, they've had an offer,
so with nowhere to move
into apart from a caravan on-site,
Kevin and Rose focus their efforts
on getting the small roundhouse
habitable as soon as possible.
I think both corners and over here.
You bugger.
For the position of the power
points, Kevin defers to Rose.
My pet hate is looking at electrical
sockets - they're just so ugly.
It's like in our own house now,
I wasn't around when somebody chose
where to put the sockets,
so that occasionally irritates me
still, 12 years later.
I've got me own ideas of what
I want.
The problem is when hers
differ, which is quite common.
The telly's not going to end up
next to the wood burner.
Well, I think it is.
We find a middle ground.
SHE LAUGHS
More towards my middle than Kevin's.
Low, behind a piece of furniture...
And then you can't get to the socket
to plug something in.
Well, once it's plugged in,
it's plugged in. Low. Right.
Are you comfortable?
Yes.
Next in their push to
finish the annexe
come the triple-glazed windows.
The whole building will eventually
need 52 in total, but
they only had enough money to order
the ones for the smaller roundhouse.
We have got the mobile home
if we're really desperate
but hopefully we'll have time to get
the annexe up and running.
But a week later,
their rush to get the annexe ready
suddenly seems irrelevant.
I just took a phone
call from the estate agents
and the people that were interested
that made an offer have withdrawn.
Fantastic(!)
There'd have been a good chance
we might have been in at least
the annexe side by late September.
The thing is, it's not just
getting a buyer,
it's our neighbours for the next
ten, however-long years.
They were very nice people,
they just decided
it wasn't the right property.
This is a grim set back.
Kevin and Rose won't be moving
into their spectacular new cob
home any time soon.
They say, don't they, that it
is better to journey than to arrive,
which when it comes to building
houses is rubbish.
Because what you really want to do
is to build the thing,
move in, and get on with your lives.
Having said that, Kevin is
addicted to building.
He will obsessively lavish attention
on every inch by hand-crafted
inch of this building.
And do you know what?
Maybe he just doesn't want
it to stop.
Kevin McCabe has been making his
mark on the Devonian landscape
for two decades, building a series
of quite unique crafted homes.
In doing so, he's kept alive
the tradition of building in cob.
That house just there, I think,
is perhaps the finest
that Kevin ever built
and it's the one that he and Rose
have lived in for the
past few years.
And if you take all of the cob
in the walls of that building
and add it together to all of the
cob that Kevin's ever handled,
you get an idea of the size,
the scale,
the almost impossible challenge
that Kevin set himself in trying to
build...this.
His castle of cob.
It's taken two-and-a-half years
to get this far,
but even unfinished,
this gargantuan project
is gobsmacking in its audacity.
It combines the undulations of
Teletubby land,
with the assertiveness of an
eco-fortress.
Good morning. Morning. Morning.
An ironed shirt. I like to make an
effort. Hello, Rose.
This is magnificent, though.
It's fantastic.
Yeah, it is beautiful.
It is beautiful, it really is.
'And it's not just a house, is it?'
It's also a greenhouse and an annexe
for family and visitors to stay in.
And it's a workplace,
a yard and barn,
built with sturdy cob pillars
and that magnificent roof.
You get a sense coming in of this...
What would you call it?
A farmstead, really.
Yeah. A sort of...nice, protected
enclosure.
Are you pleased with the character
and the nature of the building?
Really pleased!
Am I describing it in too
workmanlike, agricultural terms?
No, I like it to be a working
building. Yeah. Yeah.
No, it has a purpose,
rather than just an image of a house
being plonked in the countryside.
Let's have a look round the back,
yeah? Yeah, have a look
round the back.
Very different.
Now some of the scaff's down,
you can see these timbers.
They're going to be
a really powerful part of the
building, aren't they? Yeah.
What colour's it going to be, then,
Rose, when it's lime-washed?
Something like clotted cream.
The thing is, as you come down
around the building
it gets bigger, it goes from one to
two to three storeys
and that makes for an awful lot
of clotted-cream paint, doesn't it?
The perspective is very different,
but we're going to have a lot of
glass here
and a couple of...balconies.
Balconies sort of projecting out
of that opening? Yeah.
I'm struggling to describe
this shape.
It's a little bit like looking at a
government building in rural India.
No! Yeah? Or maybe even an Italian
hilltop fort undergoing restoration.
That would be nicer.
How about that? That would be
nicer. OK, you prefer that, yeah.
It's big anyway. It's big.
'It's SO big I feel like an ant
'standing next to a curly-wurly,
towering termite mound.'
So music room, yeah?
Yeah, music room.
Once inside, the monumental scale of
the rooms and the hefty weight of
the cob walls
give an extraordinary sense
of solidity.
You can feel the weight of
the hundreds of tonnes of earth
above you.
This is the bit you helped with
and that's about... What, this is
the bit I built? Yeah.
Absolutely rock solid.
It's not too shonky, is it?
HE LAUGHS
We had to correct it a bit up here.
All this'll get corrected
with the plaster.
And here, this is the stairwell,
yeah? Yeah.
Oh, good Lord! Yeah, it's an amazing
space. That is staggering!
It's a fantastic space.
Isn't it just brilliant?
A helical staircase will spiral up
through this space,
but always allowing light
to pour down through its centre.
This is cob architecture
at its most awe-inspiring.
It shows what's possible.
I do love the fact that you can see
all the timbers holding
the building up.
It's great to be able to read a
building like that, like a cathedral
or a Roman temple, you know.
Yeah. You've got quite a complicated
looking arrangement there.
It'll look much simpler
when it's all plastered.
I don't think it needs to.
What do you think?
No, I just love it. I love the space.
It's the centre of the house,
so it reflects the shape
of the total building. Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
We use the ladder, yeah? We do.
Yeah.
Of course, every generous room
in this place
will be plastered and painted,
but for the moment the red earth
holds the concrete lintels and the
timbers in its shaggy, muddy grip.
Joists and boards will also
disappear behind plastered ceilings,
leaving just the radiating big beams
visible.
But I'm excited to be able to see
the structure of this place
left open,
like some primitive
Moroccan citadel.
Look at this! Yeah, it's great,
isn't it?
'Above, the spectacular
and slightly bonkers
'undulating wildflower meadow roof
'is actually the only part
of the building
'that's completely finished.'
Look at that roof.
The Starship Enterprise.
Even in early autumn,
the roof is still alive
with colourful wild flowers.
There are some wall flowers and
some blue...cornflowers, are they?
Yeah, cornflowers. Really, really
pretty.
And some mushrooms!
Yeah, there is some little...
Pretty appropriate
for a mushroom-shaped roof.
There's a strange optical illusion
up here,
which is of being on a piece
of floating meadow,
the building has disappeared
completely.
This link...
I do like the way that swoops.
Yeah, I mean, I tried to, you know,
work it out mathematically
to get a kind of even radius
between the two,
but because you've got that going on
as well as that,
I had to sort of imagine how each
bit went in a gradual way. Yeah.
Who needs maths
when you've got imagination?
This project is a triumph
of Kevin and Rose's imagination.
More than just a building,
it's a sculpture
of quite wonderful complexity
and fluidity.
And while progress in making
the annexe habitable
has slowed to a crawl,
because Kevin and Rose still haven't
found a buyer for their old house,
their building is already a monument
to their determination and stamina.
Does that upset you
that after two-and-a-half years
the rest of the building
isn't as finished as this?
I've been disappointed
I haven't got a bit further
with the money that we had,
I was optimistic we might get
further, you know? But...
At every point in the past two years
when I've visited,
Kevin has been constructing
for hour upon hour every day.
And it's how you almost define
your existence, isn't it?
Do you feel kind of addicted
to that?
Yeah, there's a little bit of that.
There is a little bit of that.
And I wouldn't want my whole life
to be as all-consumed as it has been
the last couple of years.
Can you sustain that indefinitely?
Obviously not, you know, I'm going
to die at some point.
HE LAUGHS
But, no, I think while you're
being rewarded,
you can sustain it a long time.
So the actual process rewards you
as you are doing it? Yes.
That's the lovely thing with
building, you're creating stuff.
Life's short and I... Yes,
I want to get a lot achieved.
Human beings that work and operate
at this level of intensity
inevitably require a bit of support
and backup.
He needs a lot of feeding!
ALL LAUGH
And is that it?!
Yeah, I know, I need a lot of
backup. He needs a lot of backup.
I get a lot of backup. Yeah.
Could you ever consider now living
in a conventional house?
No, I'd still want to be adventurous.
It's just enabled us to be very
imaginative
with the space we live in,
and we like that.
Every time you come home,
it's got to bring a smile to your
face, hasn't it?
You know,
living somewhere like this.
It's fabulous and I just love it.
Me too! And I am humbled by the
superhuman, or rather, human effort
it's taken to tread it together,
clod by muddy clod.
You know, every single building
material we handle
has come out of the ground.
It's been dug and processed
and refined
and then packaged into nice tidy
shapes for us to handle.
Except here, of course,
Kevin had to dig
and process and refine every single
bucketful of his material.
The result is, of course,
that the integrity of the building,
the design, partly resides
in the integrity of the material.
But this place crowns
the landscape so well
because it is OF this landscape.
One day it will be finished.
One day Kevin will build his kingdom
of cob,
or as his son Ben puts it,
his "utopia of cob awesomeness".
THEY PLAY
THE GRAND DESIGNS THEME