“Here’s an explanation of our adobe T-brick building method. It’s simple, easy, and can be done by just about anyone: https://naturalbuildingblog.com/cast-in-situ-adobe-t-bricks
The concept is simple. You make a T-form with scrap lumber or metal, and you pour the adobe bricks right in place on the wall. The form only needs to be on the brick for about 5 minutes, then you pull it off, and move down the wall. If you set it up correctly, the forms walk down a wall like a caterpillar, with the end form jumping to the start of the line over and over.
Each course shifts half a brick, so that the space from the forms gets filled with the next course, creating an interlocking brick that’s both easy and cheap to make.
We used stabilized adobe, but you could use just about any material for this.”
For more photos and description of the method, check out our site:
Vela Creations.com
More at Permies.com
YouTube
I like the advancements with the concept in this project. Corner forms, deeper forms, and enough forms to “caterpillar” along the wall. Those are great improvements.
They’ve done a remarkable job on this, and the main cost is in the roof, the walls being little more than labor. They claimed ~240 hours on this building, which is 8 X 30 hour work weeks. 2 months is not a bad price to pay for a home.
Did they give a final cost?
I didn’t see a cost
We’re finishing up the floor now and we’re at $2200. The 240 hours is just for the wall. When everything is wrapped up I’ll post a breakdown of monetary and labor costs.
Abe, thanks for writing about the T-brick building technique and thanks Owen for this site and your Earthbag book. My first project in this arena was a earthbag bench inspired from reading it.
Thanks for the update and kind words Aaron.
It seems this method would have become fairly popular by now. It’s super low cost, simple, low tech, faster than adobe because you’re not drying and flipping and moving adobes back and forth, and obviously it’s 100% natural and sustainable. But there are very few examples of this as far as I know. Maybe Abe knows of other projects. This reminds me of my blog post the other day about Resistance to Change. https://naturalbuildingblog.siterubix.com/resistance-to-change/ People are very slow to change even when faced with excellent opportunities to have something better. Instead, it seems the majority of people are glued to their cell phones checking facebook constantly.