| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| James |
advice on stabilised earth walls?Does anyone have any experience of building in-situ earth walls, particularly gypsum stabilised earth walls (cast earth, or alker) ?Next year I intend to build a small outbuilding with a root cellar within it, and use the excavated material to make the earth walls. I’m reading up as much as possible at present & finding out what is (and what is not) possible. Any ideas/ advice would be helpful. |
||
| dpack |
lined with in the raw with timber works in earth lodges but they have heating and so are relatively dry
i would think damp could be a problem rammed into wattle or tyres maybe? |
||
| Behemoth |
Root cellar, damp good. | ||
| vegplot |
Use foundation much like straw bale or cob. Stone plinth with loose infill using clean small stone cobbles for drainage. Keep footing dry with suitable drainage and ensure good roof over hang. If possible make wall slightly wider than plinth so water drips off. Render external surface with lime or simply lime wash for additional sacrificial weather protection.
|
||
| James |
dpackI'm planning on quite a bit of ventilation, both at the bottom of the walls & at the top to control moisture build up. But I'm not looking for dry, and I fully want the root cellar to be cool and a little bit damp (like B'moth says).
vegplot thanks for that information. Ive read elsewhere to build stabilised earth walls onto concrete foundations, do you have a view on which would be better (apart from the environmental implication of using concrete)? The weatherproofing is something I'm concerned about. I've read up on a few renders made from lime and sandy earth, but I've also read on the cast earth website (here) about using silicone waterproofer dirrectly onto the earth wall, to retain the original finish of the earth walls. Again, if you have any views on these two finishes, I'd much appreciate it. |
||
| marigold |
No personal experience, but Cottage Building in Cob, Pise, Chalk & Clay - By Clough Williams-Ellis has a lot of technical detail and can be viewed online at books.google.co.uk | ||
| James |
yes, I've stumbled across that book in my internet trawls, a wonderful read. | ||
| vegplot |
Concrete isn't water permeable if used as a slab so any water settling between the earth and concrete will just sit there unless steps are taken to allow it to drain away. The plinth in the drawing above is designed to be built with lime rather than cement so permitting some degree of wicking and prevention of water build up. I have no practical experience of silicone coverings. If they are breathable then they're probably okay. I wouldn't use a non-breathable covering on a earth wall. |
||
| Behemoth |
There's a 'Downsizer' root cellaring book doing the rounds, I passed it on to Green Rosie, you probably know the basics any way, key seems to be ventilation, cool air ducted in from ground level to floor level and air expelled from ceiling level. Four in drainpipe seemingly preferred. | ||
| dpack |
good so far ventilation is important to make a cellar work |
||
| Bulgarianlily |
I built one this August. It is 2 meters high by four meters long, between the greenhouse and a workshop so it is not open to the weather. It sits on a slip cast concrete and stone low wall, and is 30 cms wide. I used the silty subsoil and about 7 % of cement. It has a light timber frame built into one side of it, which directly carries the roof timbers so the wall doesn't carry the weight of the roof on it, I was playing safe as I hadn't seen one before. I put it in to try and incorporate thermal mass into the north wall of the greenhouse and hopefully make the workshop frost free. We used a cement mixer to mix the soil and cement, and found a fairly wet mix was easier to work. I am quite pleased with it, but it was a lot of work to do, but less so if you consider the work we would have had barrowing away the soil that was in the way! |