A Spanish-style home with adobe walls
By Molly Miller
It used to be that a person was born in a house, lived their life in that house, and died in that same house. The children inherited the house, lived in the house, and passed it on to their kids. This went on for generations. When we walk into an old French farmhouse or Tuscan villa, the big flat earth tiles show grooves that connect us to the craftsman who made them hundreds of years ago. Our yearning for just one thing in life to be, or seem to be, permanent is answered.
Earthen homes, even newly built ones, are timeless. But earthen homes are not as plentiful in the United States today as mass produced houses that never will endure a family heritage and never will carry on stories of many generations. Most of these homes do not breathe for they contain formaldehyde and toxic glue. Their thin walls do not radiate heat in winter and coolness in summer. They contain the forests that were cut down, the land that was mined, the energy that was used, and the pollution that was created to manufacture the building materials. If we value our forests,land, and clean air, using the abundant earth to build homes is sensible and wise. It acknowledges our responsibility to future generations of people and other living beings of the planet.
Growing from the Earth
There are countless ways of constructing earthen walls. Archeologists believe we left our caves for homes whose walls were made of twigs and mud. Even today, builders called daubers use variations on this ancient method. Now we often use technology to construct rammed earth and mix in other materials to construct earth ships and straw-earth hybrids. From the simplest adobe hut to the most sophisticated contemporary designs, possibilities for earthen homes keep advancing.
What is Adobe?
“My grandfather used to say that the earth was full of sound. He didn’t mean cars. He meant crickets, frogs, and the echo of stars colliding in the intensity of the crowded Milky Way. How fitting, how intelligent for man to build out of that sound, that music. Adobe repels the discordant and amplifies the balanced sounds and music of life, death, rebirth.
” —Orlando Romero, from Adobe: Building and Living with Earth (Houghton Mifflin, 1994)
Adobe began with early civilizations. Essentially soil, adobe contains a mixture of clay and water, prepared into blocks mortared with mud and covered with plaster or stucco. Adobe can include straw or other plant material. Adobe bricks require a year of arid weather to dry, which is why the material is so common in the American Southwest and other hot, arid climates.
Cob as a Building Material
Cob buildings are handmade. Cob is clay, sand, and sometimes straw, combined to create a quick-drying building material that dries rock-hard. Builders layer handfuls of cob on top of one another, shaping walls with their hands.
Oregon cob enthusiast Ionto Evans, widely known for bringing cob to the United States ten years ago, explains the difference between traditional cob and Oregon cob: “Traditional cob has depended on mass, thickness of the walls, for strength. Traditional cob is not always made of the best materials. Because of lack of transportation, traditional cob builders use what’s under their feet. Traditional cob buildings can be found throughout the world.
“Oregon cob,” Evans says, “acknowledges that, at the moment, we have access to cheap transportation and this wonderful waste product called straw. Oregon cob is characterized by careful choice of materials and the use of curvilinear walls for strength.”
Using Brick
Basic bricks are common and easily overlooked as an earthen material. They are simple to use, are small solar collectors, and they are fireproof. Unlike adobe bricks, basic bricks are blocks of pure wet clay, and fired, not air-dried, at high temperatures. Before being fired in the kiln, the clay is cut into bars with wires and molded. People have been using many kinds of brick as a building material for thousands of years; before modern transportation, the color of bricks were the color of the land. Bricks are popular because of their fire-resistance, and that they can be placed in appealing patterns. Brick floors are common in old farmhouses and cottages, and you’ll frequently find bricks in herringbone or woven patterns in outside floors and walkways. For floors and walkways you can easily lay pavers on sand.
An Underground Home
Using the earth to berm or shelter a home, which may be constructed out of any material, is one more way to build using the earth. An “underground” house has similar advantages to earthen buildings—it reduces noise; it holds heat in winter; it stays cool in summer; it is fireproof. It is also weatherproof, has no foundation, and uses fewer materials and less labor to build.
An underground house blends into the land and follows its contours. There are two kinds of earth-sheltered houses. The chambered house is truly an underground structure, and the entire structure sits below the original grade. The bermed house is built at or close to original grade while earth is mounded or “bermed” against outside walls. Bermed houses often have an earth roof, as well.
Two names linked with underground houses are Rob Roy and Malcolm Wells. According to Roy, who runs the Earthwood Building School, soil has a mass of as much as 1,300 pounds per cubic foot, resulting in fairly constant underground temperatures. In the winter, the ground temperature at a depth of ten feet is a constant 45°F even if it is below zero aboveground.
Whenever anyone compares underground houses to cold, damp, dark basements, Wells says, “An underground house has no more in common with a basement than a penthouse apartment has in common with a hot, dark, dusty attic.” In fact the majority of underground and earth-bermed houses incorporate passive solar features that complement their inherent thermal mass temperature controls. Underground homes tend to orient south, face their whole front with glass, and usually contain skylights; they can be brighter and sunnier than traditional aboveground homes.
Provided by Natural Home - http://www.naturalhomemagazine.com
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