East Coast Rammed Earth

Sirewall is a Canadian rammed earth company and they have just produced this amazing video that sums up many of the reasons for building with rammed earth. If you live in North America, check them out. www.sirewall.com

Following is a interview on ABC (Australian Broadcasting Comission) radio’s bush telegraph program.

A rammed earth house in Derby in Western Australia (Daniela Ciancio)

Click here to listen to Bush Telegraph
Innovation and social development has driven the department of housing WA to choose rammed earth houses. It was the thermal qualities and operational costs of the house that was important to them plus it makes a comfortable house.

Dr Daniela Ciancio who started in concrete engineering has become interested in Rammed Earth because it is “durable, tough and strong”.

This video isn’t about rammed earth, sorry about that. The song alone is worth a post, a great song by Willie Nelson covering Cold Play’s “the Scientist”.

The film, by film-maker Johnny Kelly, depicts the life of a farmer as he slowly turns his family farm into an industrial animal factory before seeing the errors of his ways and opting for a more sustainable future. Both the film and the soundtrack were commissioned by Chipotle to emphasize the importance of developing a sustainable food system.

No body said it was easy!

We have started working at Smiths Lake, Pacific Palms, on the Mid North coast of New South Wales.. It is quite a beautiful site and we are building quite an affordable building. We will keep you posted.

Assoc Prof Terence Williamson of the School Architecture, Landscape Architecture at Adelaide University, in conjunction with the Earth Building Association of Australia and the Nillumbik Mudbrick Association, is conducting a survey into the performance of rammed earth and mud brick houses.

The study aims to find out how people use and think about their houses. Knowledge about living in an earth building, what it’s really like and the feelings people have about the comfort of their home are the main things the research aims to discover. The more that is known about such factors, the better are the chances of designing such houses that are sustainable and suitable for different people in different places.

To gather the information an on-line questionnaire has been set up. Preferably this questionnaire should be filled out by the person of the household over the age of 25 years who spends most of the time at home, but really any household member over this age may fill out the questionnaire.

Please click on this link. We will try and provide the results when they are released.

This is a post from a great school in Thailand called Panyaden School that has taked sustainability quite seriously with beautiful results. What impresses most is the graph about the thermal efficiencies of rammed earth.

By Markus Roselieb @ Panyaden School

Rammed earth is ideal for hot and dry climates because of its great capacity to store heat. Therefore it is perfect for Chiang Mai during the dry season where we have hot days and cool nights. The heat gets absorbed by the rammed earth walls during the day and is released into the surroundings during the night. In this way, it balances out the temperature of the surrounding area.

Rammed Earth and Bamboo at Panyaden School

In the case of a high moisture content in the environment, rammed earth is very suitable as it has good moisture absorption. The humidity content of the earth when it is dried out is very low. The earth can absorb up to 30 times more water than concrete which means that in the long and heavy rainy season, the rammed earth walls will absorb the moisture of the environment, and balance out the moisture content, providing a mold- and fungus-free space.

Comparing Thermal Performance
The table below compares the thermal performance of classrooms built with two different types of walls.

Thermal Efficiencies of rammed earth

Source: Earth Architecture in Western China
Red curve = indoor temperature in a rammed earth classroom (like those in Panyaden)
Yellow curve = indoor temperature in a conventional brick and concrete-based classroom
Blue curve = outdoor temperature

It is obvious from the study above that the indoor temperature of the earth classroom is always stable. In summer, it swings only between 21oC and 24oC. In winter, without any energy consumption for heating, it can reach an acceptable indoor comfort.

If you touch earth, concrete, steel and asphalt that are exposed to the sun, you will find that the different materials have different temperatures. The metal will be by far the hottest, followed by asphalt, then concrete (both are still so hot that you cannot walk barefoot on them for more than a few minutes). The earth will, however, be cool.

A concrete building is like an oven in which an air-conditioned interior space is inevitable. On the other hand, rammed earth has an excellent thermal mass because of its high density, and the high specific heat capacity of the soils used in its construction. It can store the heat during the day and release it slowly into the surroundings during the night. This energy-saving feature is one reason why we built our classrooms with this technique.

Article via http://arquitecturasdeterra.blogspot.com/

This is a great movie, that shows you just how important Dirt is to us. It is something we take for granted but is fast disappearing.

http://www.dirtthemovie.org/

“Most of the world considers dirt a viable building material”

I think it was Ben Harper that said “what’s from the earth, is of the greatest worth.”

“Rammed earth may be a future building material in north-west Indigenous communities if a study at The University of Western Australia proves successful.” The UWA team will submit their findings to Standards Australia for a national rating of rammed earth. Read more at Science alert.

Check out this design. Quite interesting use of thermal mass. The rammed earth fireplace has a bed on top and is covered with a a tent like roof structure. It is the work of Simón De Agüero, a grad-student at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. Check out his site here.

Small Footprint Initiative

Here is another opportunity of viewing some rammed earth buildings. The small footprint initiative is a look into a different way of living on the 10th to 12 of September.

“It is a celebration of our community and the environment with a weekend of activities, information, and practical demonstrations of responsible building design, construction, land use management, permaculture, complimentary therapies and passive recreation opportunities in our area.”

Be sure to call into our own Justin and Megan Cooke’s house on the tour.

There is a timetable of events here as well as a map.