Colorado Earth
was founded by engineer and architectural designer Lisa Morey. After moving to New Zealand in 1999 to study architecture, Lisa was inspired to begin creating homes out of mud bricks. She met and began working with a local architect who was building homes this way.
During her time in New Zealand she co-authored Adobe Homes for All Climates: Simple, Affordable, and Earthquake-Resistant Natural Building Techniques and you can read a review I wrote about this book at greenhomebuilding.com.
Now, she is using compressed earth blocks made largely from a sandy-clay mixture. The company’s mission “is to scale the natural building industry in Colorado by offering an affordable wall system made from locally obtained material.”
The compressed earth blocks are resistant to fire, won’t blow over in high winds, can’t be picked up by a tornado, and are even waterproof, making them flood resistant as well. The walls, which are 10 inches thick, provide excellent thermal mass for keeping in heat during a cold spell and pushing heat out during a heatwave.
The next challenge for Colorado Earth is promoting its building practices until they’re popular enough that the construction industry at large wants to use them, which would result in an infrastructure and supply chain being put in place.
As the demand for “earth-block” houses increases, they could be even less expensive than they are now and help to keep even more people safe from extreme weather events in their own homes.
You can read the original article at www.yahoo.com
Those earth block homes are beautiful, and I love how the adaptations of this material get around the restriction of adobe only being feasible in deserts, opening up the possibility of using an adobe-like material for building in probably at least 75% of climates on Earth. And the fact that dirt blocks can clearly be used to build several stories might just be the icing on the cake!! 🎂🍰