adobe building

Solid Earth Adobe Buildings

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“Verena Maeder is owner of SOLID EARTH LTD since 2002 and is an earth building artisan with 19 years experience in the construction of earth buildings in Switzerland, Germany and New Zealand. Verena has trained in Architecture and Building Biology and Ecology in Switzerland, where she has done a lot of research on earth building … Read more

The $100 House

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Owner-built homes made with locally available materials can be constructed very inexpensively.
Owner-built homes made with locally available materials can be constructed very inexpensively.

A few years ago my girlfriend called me into the living room to see an adobe house on TV. “Quick”, she said, “it only cost $100”. I thought there must be some mistake, but I rushed over to see the house out of curiosity. To my surprise it was quite nice.

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Cast In-situ Adobe T-Bricks

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Cast in-situ adobe T-bricks by Vela Creations.com
Cast in-situ adobe T-bricks by Vela Creations.com

The blog post the other day about cast in-situ adobe was quite popular and so let’s explore a variation of this method developed by Abe at Vela Creations.com. I consider Abe’s Tblocks a major contribution to the natural building movement – even good enough for a major magazine article. Keep reading to learn the details.

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Cast In-situ Adobe Construction

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You can make adobe blocks directly on the wall with molds to save time and labor.
You can make adobe blocks directly on the wall with molds to save time and labor.

Typical adobe construction involves making adobe blocks by digging and mixing mud, filling molds with the mixture, drying the blocks in the sun, turning the blocks every so often, moving the blocks to cure under cover, and then moving them to the jobsite where they are often moved several more times in the course of constructing the wall. A typical New Mexico size brick is four inches thick, ten inches wide, and fourteen inches long (4x10x14). A brick this size will weigh about thirty pounds. Obviously building with adobes is a slow, labor intensive process.

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