Natural building course South Africa

I took part in a week long natural building course in Berg-En-Dal eco-village in South Africa, I had an amazing time, learnt a lot and felt it gave me the knowledge and support to now start building our family home. 

here is an overview of what was taught on the course:

PERMACULTURE ORIENTATION
Zone Zero (home) and Zone One (surrounding garden) integration and climate mitigation Green technology introduction.

BUILDING SKILLS
-Basic site layout and measuring
-Passive solar design
-Foundations
-Walls
-Plastering
-Openings

MATERIALS
-Cob
-Mud brick /Adobe
-Rammed earth
-Straw bale
-Rock
-Compressed earth block
-Environmental and social impact of building

making a stone and cob/lime mortar foundation

Building an adobe brick wall

For anyone who is interested in natural building or building your own home, I feel a building course is really useful to do before you start. For those of you living in southern africa I would recommend the course at Berg-En-Dal eco-village, the link for their website is below:      

http://berg-en-dal.co.za/