Our woodland >> Roundhouse education centre

The Roundhouse education centre has been built completely from local and recycled materials with the help of volunteers, and not one unit of electricity from the national grid has been used on the site.
The oak frame of the roundhouse has a reciprocal frame roof designed and built by Alan Barlow of Woodhouse Woods. The turf roof provides insulation, absorbs rainfall, provides more habitat for insects and wildlife, and it blends in with the surrounding area.
 
The walls of the roundhouse are made of haybales, cob, cordwood, 2nd hand windows and bottles. The walls were designed by Staci & Richard Sylvan and built during a low impact building course in April 2008.
Cob is an ancient building material which is a mixture of sand, clay and straw or horsehair. We dug the clay just a few metres away from the roundhouse. The haybales provide excellent insulation and were produced at Blaen Y Wern.
Using local, reclaimed and recycled materials is great. The energy needed to make and transport these materials is much less than conventional wall building materials such as kiln fired bricks and concrete/cement. And you can find or create the building materials yourself, for next-to-nothing.
The earth oven and rocket stove were designed by Caz Phillips and built by course participants.