We discourage using lots of cement because of its adverse environmental impact. However, there are times when it makes sense. For instance, concrete is very useful for making strong bond beams and water resistance structures in rainy climates. Foamed or lightweight concrete such as aircrete has become very popular lately because its lighter weight reduces labor and improves the insulation value. Bricks and blocks are the defacto international building unit, so I did a search for “aircrete blocks” and found the Forterra company in the UK, who is a major supplier of these green building blocks. Their products are profiled below.
green block
Rammed Earth Block Machine Makes Clay Materials Harder than Concrete
Guest post by Alex Wright of Watershed Materials, the company who’s making geopolymer concrete blocks out of waste clay materials. We’ve covered their exciting development in two previous blog posts. This article focuses on their rammed earth block machine.
Ingenious New Building Method Replaces Concrete Block with Rammed Earth
This may be the biggest story of the year. I just found out more information about the clay masonry blocks we reported on the other day. It turns out they were invented by rammed earth expert David Easton, and the blocks are already for sale in northern California in the San Francisco area. That means the development of Watershed Materials earth blocks are much farther along than I realized. This is VERY good news for natural builders and so I will do additional blog posts on this subject. Today’s blog post is about David Easton’s new home that’s made with these clay blocks.