New kids' playhouse meant as more than a fun place to be

The gooey mass is sticky and heavy, a carefully crafted recipe of sand, clay and water that kids and adults happily squish between their bare toes to create an age-old building material.

Once the stomping is complete, the dense concoction is formed by hand into canteloupe-sized balls and combined with straw. The finished product is known as cob, and when dry it will rival the durability of concrete.

For several weeks beginning in late August, volunteers at the Fremont Township community garden made and used the cob to create the walls of a playhouse.

Blob by blob, this conversation piece has emerged as a showcase for a natural building method. It also is intended as an example of recycling and sustainability, a hands-on green building experience and lesson in teamwork.

"I want this garden to be an outdoor classroom for the community," says caretaker Alicia Dodd, the idea originator and constant presence at the building site in the garden near the township office on Route 60.

After a worn wooden playhouse was blown down last winter, Dodd began to research replacement possibilities.

"I was trying to make it as local and sustainable as possible," she said. "I just want to showcase different techniques - anything I can do there to make people think how to re-use materials that otherwise (would be discarded)."

Setting a rock base, building a foundation and patio and framing the 8-foot by 8-foot structure began in May.

Blobs of cob then were layered atop the foundation of reclaimed concrete to form the walls. This past week, Dodd filled the last gaps and smoothed the surface as a finishing touch.

Cob is an Old English reference relating more to the amount of material rather than its composition, say those familiar with the technique.

"If you had a couple of weeks, some friends and shovels, you could have a home," said Charlotte Hendrickson, a volunteer from Grayslake. "I find it charming people have used it so long."

Hendrickson said she home-schools her sons, Lars, 8, and Sage, 12, and brings them to the site to learn "a positive method of working."

The straw in the mix acts as rebar for strength. Builders seek a texture like pizza dough but grittier and not as sticky. You can't just heave a blob on the wall and move on - it has to be worked in.

"After you've done this a couple of times, you get the feel of what it needs to be like," Dodd explained.

Kids had fun mixing materials barefoot, but as the building season began to wane, Dodd used a drill for speed.

Built using local materials, including clay from work sites, four feet of stone for the base, reclaimed concrete for the foundation and patio and cedar for roof support, the playhouse took shape as perhaps the only cob structure in Lake County.

Unlike adobe, which is laid like bricks with mortar between, cob is applied uniformly. The garden and structures are exempt from building codes, but Dodd consulted with county authorities to ensure it was structurally safe and could support a garden of native plants.

"Cob design is unusual for Lake County, but given the emergence of the sustainability movement, this approach may gain popularity over time," said Eric Waggoner, Lake County's director of planning, building and development.

This type of structure is not specifically addressed, but the county building code allows authorities to consider and approve alternate methods and materials if the design meets the code intent, he added.

About the time Dodd was doing her research, Peter Poli, a sewer and water inspector for the Lake County public works department, learned about the old playhouse. Poli has been studying cob and other techniques for 11 years and is a member of an online natural building meetup group.

Poli and Dodd knew each other through a Mundelein-based homesteading Facebook group. And Poli had experience having helped build a cob beehive at the North Park Village Nature Center in Chicago.

"It was a perfect circumstance all the way around," he said of connecting with Dodd and providing instruction to volunteers. Dodd will install decorative elements and plant the roof garden in spring. Interested? Stop by and have a look.

"We kind of like to think of it as a parklike thing where people can visit whenever they want," she said.