by Franz Muhl | Apr 5, 2015 | Adobe, Clay, Cob, Franz Muhl, Living Sustainably, Local materials, Mud brick, Natural building, Natural building course, Natural plasters, Owner-builder journey, Peter McIntosh, Reclaimed materials, Sand, Sustainable building, Sustainable human settlements
In this edition of the Owner-builder journey, Franz Muhl writes about a mud brick addition to his Scarborough home: “Let me build a home from fertile materials that is beautiful and healthy to live in, have a very low footprint and would grow a forest if you...
by QPT Qala Phelang Tala | Sep 30, 2014 | Adobe, Amanda de Gouveia, Anita Venter, Clay, Cob, Community, Earth testing, Events, Insulation, Local materials, Mud brick, Natural building, Peter McIntosh, Qala Phelang Tala, Sand, Start Living Green, Sustainable human settlements
Imagine being outside on a chilly Free State winter morning with the sun just coming out and starting to gently warm your body. Now imagine being told to take off your shoes in order to trudge in icy cold mud. I glanced at my fellow volunteers and I saw a collective...
by Peter McIntosh | Jun 3, 2014 | Adobe, Clay, Cob, Compressed Earth Brick (CEB), Earth testing, Earth theory, Mud brick, Natural building, Natural building methods, Peter McIntosh, Rammed Earth, Sand, Sandbag, Strawbale, Sustainable building
By Peter McIntosh (Please note that in order to understand what is written here you will need to have read my previous post on understanding earth) Earth requires two properties to make it strong enough for building, compressive and tensile strength. In much the...
by Peter McIntosh | Apr 20, 2014 | Adobe, Clay, Cob, Compressed Earth Brick (CEB), Earth theory, Mud brick, Natural building methods, Peter McIntosh, Rammed Earth, Sand
By Peter McIntosh One of the challenges of working with earth is that no two sites are the same. The recipes one learns on one site may not work on another, because the earths’ found there are composed differently. Most earth building relies on a mix of sand and clay,...
