The idea of DIY cast stone houses has proven to be so popular that I’ve started a new blog to facilitate the development of geopolymer housing. It is an open source project to develop geopolymer cast stone construction. The goal is to create an archive of relevant information through an interactive process of sharing ideas among readers that will enable people to build their own cast stone homes. Since there is no book with all the information needed, we will work things out together.
The new blog enables me to publish geopolymer content more frequently and keep everything related to geopolymer on one site so the information is easier to keep track of. This also means geopolymer won’t crowd out the main focus on earthbag building on this blog.
[I still need to copy all the comments to the new blog.]
Greeting from Botswana ! Our climate here in this Central Southern Africa region is semi-arid desert (Arizona ?) I’m planning to build a GeoPolymer EarthBag house. We have abundant Soda Ash (www.botash.bw) available locally, plus a quarry (stone dust/crusher fines) close-by (about a 1 mile away).
Does anyone have any real-life experience they could share building a GeoPolymer Earthbag house, especially if they have built using one of Owen Geiger’s earthbag house plans (e.g. The Beachcomber). I’m planning to use a mix ratio of 90% stone dust:10% Soda Ash to fill the bags and then once laid&tamped to use a garden hose to wet each course. Any comment, tips, advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance…
Have you made any sample bags yet?
I’m currently busy sourcing sisal type seed bags (absorb water better) however these bags are too large (20kg) so we may have to cut them and stitch them again.
We also looking at sourcing/importing a suitable bag from neighboring South Africa.
I am interested in finding someone or some business that can replace all the concrete staircases at our condo complex with Geopolymer staircases. We need to replace all of them they are over 30 years old and crumbling because they had metal rods inserted for hand rails that have rusted and caused the concrete to crack break etc. Contact me by email at cherokeegardens@outlook.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mnxe6hUrMa4&feature#t=3m43s
Hi Owen,
Good idea !
Since you planted this geopolymer seed in my brain, I seem to see it everywhere ;-)
Have a look at this article and especially the photo – it looks like it was cast in bags and the inscriptions were done while stil soft, rather than carved.
http://www.iol.co.za/scitech/science/discovery/neolithic-site-virtually-untouched-1.1079067
What do you think ?
It’s hard to say by looking at that small photo. It could be natural stone with shallow carved designs.