I’ve added a third entry in ‘The $300 House Open Design Challenge’. CEBs are popular and practical, and some of you may be thinking of using them for columns, next to wood stoves, interior walls or as a design element. They would make a great center column in a roundhouse. Geopolymer CEBs turn to actual … Read more
Full text of the video is available on my Naturalhouse’s YouTube channel. This blog post will focus on summarizing the test results. Please note that even though half the samples were earthen blocks, you can do these same tests on earthbags to help develop a good soil mix. A link to additional tests can be … Read more
Compressed earth blocks (CEBs) have countless uses and come in dozens of shapes (many more than shown here). They are commonly used for residential and commercial structures, earthquake resistant structures, privacy walls, columns, bond beams, pavers, planters, stairs, etc. For instance, you could make CEB columns on your house and privacy walls and stack earthbags … Read more
Here’s a great, low cost way to build floors with compressed earth blocks. This Instructable is by Velacreations. Visit their website for more great ideas. When considering what material to use for a floor, few people look beyond a concrete slab, with something like tile or carpet as a finish. For us, however, there were … Read more
If you’ve been watching our videos, you’ve seen us making various earthen blocks. This one here is the best one so far. It has clay and rice hulls. Another very good block was the clay with vetiver grass. So I had the idea to combine the best – the rice hulls and the vetiver. That’s … Read more
Today we’re experimenting with rice hull ash and road base. We’re using a small measuring device so we can get about 10% rice hull ash. This is what rice hull ash looks like. It’s hulls from rice that’s been burned. It looks like ash from a forest fire. It’s a natural pozzolan which can make … Read more