Clifton's Rammed Earth Blog » Uncatgorized

Thailand Rammed Earth House

admin — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 03:26:31 +0000

One of our students has a house under construction in Thailand. Yes, stabilized rammed earth is great for tropical climates: Rain, hurricanes, termites, heat etc are no problem. We have a few pictures to share of this project with more to come hopefully soon.

The formwork

This project in being rammed manually. The tamper head has been made to fit the corners of the forms.

Hopefully these walls inspire more people to build with rammed earth in Thailand.

Beautiful layers, changing the tones of the rammed earth by each layer can have a wonderful effect.

The big chamfer on the wall is a nice window detail.

The wall in the foreground has just been completed, it is still wet and that is why it is darker than the other walls. 3 walls are up…looking forward to more.

Rammed Earth Workshops – 2010 pictures

admin — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 04:40:32 +0000

We held several successful workshops in 2010 and these are just some of the pictures.

This is a little over half of our crew from the 1st rammed earth workshop on the Plum Walls. Starting from left to right: Mahatama, Mona, Chris, Clifton, Yamuna, Peter.

Neal

David, Paul and Gabo are placing the fabric for the footing.

Paul is tying steel, there was so much tying to do he became quite expert at it.

Diego “el maestro” jajaja.. Diego is an experienced rammed earth builder from Columbia, he came to learn of the different techniques we use so he can apply them to his new projects.

Lot’s of shovelling, enough for everyone!

Zoltan tamping.

Andreas is an architect from Columbia who now lives in Canada. He wants to bring this technique back home to do some meaningful projects.

Gabo trowels the cap. Gabo, who is also an architect. Is planning to apply his new skills in Mexico.

Paul shovels.

A sunflower impression for the forms.

A 6′ tall sunflower raised off a rammed earth wall is a beautiful thing!

Aug 2 – 7 : Rammed Earth Wall Building – Workshop

admin — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 06:27:02 +0000

We will be building a 50′ long wall in our next workshop from Aug 2-9 on beautiful Salt Spring Island BC.

More details in the right hand column under workshops/training

Insulated Rammed earth wall building workshop – April 19-28

admin — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 01:38:14 +0000

Learn to build insulated rammed earth walls, including footings and more in our next workshop from April 19-28. Follow the workshops/training link on the right hand column to learn more.

What is rammed earth?

admin — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 23:17:47 +0000

To revisit and clarify for those who don’t know, since there is some misinformation out there on the net by people without first hand knowledge.

Rammed Earth is: A wall made of compacted layers of mixed gravel, sand,silt and clay that is hard as rock. It can have insulation inside the wall and/or be stabilized with some lime or cement like the walls we make. When we say clay it is not like pottery clay but instead it is finely distributed and only makes up around 15% of the mixture, not noticeable to most people.

The above definition is more or less the same mixture that has been used for 10,000 years for quality structural walls. Some people write about or experiment with packing mud or some other mixture that no professional builder anywhere in the world would use. So anybody can put some type of earth in forms and ram it and can call it whatever they want but it is important to understand the difference between that and what building professionals, engineers and most people call rammed earth. Rammed earth is a high performance structural wall system that can handle earthquakes, rain, snow etc, and it’s built to last. Learn more about insulated rammed earth.

Rammed Earth Building Workshops – 2010

admin — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 02:21:02 +0000

Learn to build rammed earth walls for your own home, yard or as a professional career. We have set most of our course dates for 2010. We offer the following courses, click on these underlined links below for more details.

Insulated Rammed Earth Building – workshop – and apprenticeship

Rammed Earth Wall Building for Landscaping Projects – workshop

Lighthouse Demonstration Wall

admin — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 03:55:06 +0000

We were invited to build a demonstration wall inside the Lighthouse Sustainable Building Center in Vancouver. The idea was to build a small wall as a display to educate and show people an example of rammed earth. We built a wall that was 4′ high and 4′ long due to space constraints, people just need to imagine it as full height to get the idea of what the walls are like in a house, if they haven’t seen one yet.

Wall forms set up and ready to go.

We set up in the back alley, here the guys are stirring the pigment into the mix.

Mixing is almost done.

The mix is ready to go.

John ramming.

Amanda admires the colour and sun shining onto the poured cap just after we had finished.

Removing the forms the next morning. The blurriness of the pic is from moving so fast because we were excited to see the finished wall. =)

Clifton and Rama on opening night. The wall was a big hit, lot’s of interest and questions from the guests.

What is Rammed Earth?

admin — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 05:43:24 +0000

Rammed Earth is : Compacted layers of mixed gravel, sand and clay that is hard like stone. Add insulation and you have insulated rammed earth or add some cement and you have stabilized rammed earth. For seismic zones, steel reinforcing is added according to engineering specifications.

Please do not confuse rammed earth with Cob or mud as some people do. Rammed earth is vastly superior in strength and will not liquefy when exposed to large amounts of water.

Quality built walls are not only beautiful, durable and sophisticated, but act as structural walls that have a very heavy load bearing capacity.

Rammed Earth Layers

admin — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:29:12 +0000

In a rammed earth wall there are layers that are made from each time a lift of material is compacted but there are also many ways to add artistic highlights to the surface of the wall. The following are just a few samples.

Artistic layering using rammed limestone with some red and black lava.

Rammed earth layers showing nicely on a pillar.

Some layers of various shades of green stones.

Rammed earth layers made with small lifts.

Gold and copper highlight layers.

Rammed Earth Wall Testing

admin — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 21:53:50 +0000

Quality rammed earth walls have fantastic strength, for example a 2′ x 2′ pillar could hold the weight of a double decker bus. We test our walls to make sure that they are performing as expected and every test we have ever done has met or exceeded our engineers specifications. Experience in material selection combined with proper mix and curing procedures are the way to achieve consistent results. Wall testing can be done either by ramming test cylinders or by coring a finished wall. The samples are sent to a lab where crush tests are performed.

Coring a rammed earth test wall that we had built for this specific purpose. It’s always fun working in the rain!

This is what the rammed earth wall looks like after the core sample has been removed.

The rammed earth core sample shows the inner material much differently than the outside of the wall as the stones have been cut through. Notice how there are various particle sizes, this is a characteristic of a good mix. Having a good particle size distribution allows the material to be compacted better, leading to a higher quality wall.