Daniel and Katherine Ray run Spiritwood Natural Building, a business that offers workshops teaching people how to build sustainable cob houses.
Daniel Ray/Spiritwood Natural Building
Daniel and Katherine Ray live debt-free in a 700-square-foot cob house that they built by hand.
The couple now runs a business teaching others how to build their own sustainable houses amid rising home prices.
“It’s really important that people know that they have other housing options,” Daniel told Insider.
Daniel and Katherine Ray live debt-free in an earthen house that they built using cob, a natural material made from clay, sand, and straw.
The millennial couple spent over two years constructing their cob house in the Bitterroot Valley in Victor, Montana — where they’ve been living since 2019.
Encouraged by their own experiences, the two of them started Spiritwood Natural Building — a company that teaches others how to build their own cob houses.
“We are not doing this full-time but just as a side passion project,” Daniel told Insider. He still works as a librarian at the local public library, while Katherine is a stay-at-home mom to their daughter.
The exterior of the couple’s cob house and the garden.
Daniel Ray/Spiritwood Natural Building
“We realized that we just love doing it, so we started teaching people how to do it,” Daniel said. “And that grew into a kind of a business.”
Cob homes as a cheaper housing alternative
Part of their passion is driven by a purpose to help others achieve homeownership amid rising US home prices.
Since the couple paid for their home out of pocket, they don’t have to finance a mortgage every month — leaving them free of debt.
Ray estimates that they spent just under $20,000 building their cob house. In contrast, most houses in the area are being built for around $150,000 to $200,000, he said.
Cob is made using water, straw, and dirt that has a high amount of clay content. To mix it, the mixture is trampled on by foot.
Daniel Ray/Spiritwood Natural Building
Houses closer to the town center in Victor, Montana, are even pricier: They have a median listing home price of $999,000, per the latest data from real estate platform Realtor.com.
“Especially in the area that we are right now, there’s an influx of people moving in — it’s kind of a housing crisis where we’re at with people losing their rentals and their homes,” Ray said. “It’s really important that people know that they have other housing options.”
Teaching skills through workshops and camps
Although they offer consultations for building projects, the couple’s central focus is spreading knowledge through hosting their own workshops and camps.
The workshops cost between $120 to $150, and they cover a variety of topics, including how to make earth-based plasters or install earthen floors, per the couple’s website.
The couple also hosts four-day and nine-day building immersion camps where participants can learn how to build a full structure by working on a guest house. The cost of attending the camps ranges from $500 to $900 depending on its duration, per the couple’s website.
A group of people working together to built a cob house. During building immersion camps, participants work on demonstration structures that are on the couple’s land.
Daniel Ray/Spiritwood Natural Building
“We have a couple of sample buildings — they’re demonstration structures, so people are coming and building structures like that,” Ray said. “We’ve also done some offsite building for smaller structures like stoves, so we’re always open to hosting workshops at people’s places,” he added.
Currently, the couple makes enough money from the business to pay for the projects, Daniel said. The amount that participants pay to attend the camps and the workshops covers the cost of supplies to construct the buildings.
There’s no age limit on who can join the workshops, although minors will need a parent to sign off on their participation.
“We have kids come to our classes to learn how to do stuff too — it’s family-friendly,” he added.
A progress photo of a cob house being built.
Daniel Ray/Spiritwood Natural Building
The participants who attend the couple’s workshops come from the area as well as far-flung states.
“We recently had someone from as far as Alaska come to our classes,” Daniel said. “She wasn’t sure what to expect, but after nine days and being able to build a small house, she was determined to go home and begin her own house.”
A woman working on laying the interior floors of a cob house.
Daniel Ray/Spiritwood Natural Building
Educating others on the benefits of living in a cob house
Apart from teaching workshop participants practical skills, the couple is also passionate about educating others about the benefits of living in an earthen home.
For instance, the interiors of cob houses are much cooler than typical houses during summer, which translates into cost-savings in terms of electricity bills.
Although temperatures in Montana can go up to 90 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, temperatures inside the cob house can stay in the low 70s even without air conditioning, Ray said.
A progress photo of the inside of the couple’s cob house back when they were still building it.
Daniel Ray/Spiritwood Natural Building
At the end of the day, the beauty of building a home like that is that it can be as cheap or as expensive as the owners want it to be, Ray said.
“If you design a house that’s much more compact, it’s going to reduce the price by a huge amount. It’s also going to reduce the amount of effort that you have to put into building the house,” Ray said.
Through all their education efforts about building cob houses and living debt-free, there’s just one point that they’re really driving at.
“The main idea is that anybody could build a house — it’s not rocket science,” Ray said. “There are a lot of specialized construction industries that make people feel like they can’t when it’s actually something that they can do.”