Adobe
From Swikipedia
Introduction
Adobe is one of the oldest building materials in use. It is basically just dirt that has been moistened with water, sometimes with chopped straw or other fibers added for strength, and then allowed to dry in the desired shape. Commonly adobe is shaped into uniform blocks that can be stacked like bricks to form walls, but it can also be simply piled up over time to create a structure.
Brief Description
The best adobe soil will have between 15% and 30% clay in it to bind the material together, with the rest being mostly sand or larger aggregate. Too much clay will shrink and crack excessively; too little will allow fragmentation. Sometimes adobe is stabilized with a small amount of cement or asphalt emulsion added to keep it intact where it will be subject to excessive weather. Adobe blocks can be formed either by pouring it into molds and allowing it to dry; or it can be pressed into blocks with a hydraulic or leverage press. Adobe can also be used for floors that have resilience and beauty, colored with a thin slip of clay and polished with natural oil.
Benefits:
Environment Friendly: The raw materials for adobe bricks are extracted from the environment in a low-impact manner and are returned to the earth after a long duration of use. Adobe bricks offer the lowest embodied energy of any building material. The average adobe brick home is made using only 10 percent of the embodied energy used for the construction of a typical modern house. Building homes with adobe bricks, therefore, burdens the environment less than any other home-building method.
Energy Efficient: Properly built adobe brick structures offer a high thermal resistance, enabling structures to stay cool in the summer and retain their warmth during the winter. Adobe walls are remarkably long-lasting and require little to no maintenance. They are vermin-proof, dust-free, fire-proof, flood-proof, insect-proof, bullet-proof, rust-proof, water-proof, and can be wiped clean with a sponge. Since adobe is non-toxic, the walls are also non-allergenic.
Affordable: When labor and materials are used resourcefully, the adobe brick home is very affordable. Bricks can be made on site using local materials, greatly reducing manufacturing costs. An unskilled crew can quickly learn to make and lay bricks efficiently. An average 2000 sqft (185 sqm) house would have around 2315sqft (215 sqm) of adobe brick wall and use around 5120 adobe bricks, using approximately 130 cubic yards (100 cubic meters) of raw material. A team of four can make on average 600 adobe bricks per day and lay up about 250 bricks into the wall in an 8-hour working day. A well-built earth home will outperform a well-built timber frame home in durability, thermal dynamics, longevity, and structural integrity. No other building material comes as close to meeting our high standards of environmental sustainability, performance, and ease of use.
Ease of Construction: Unlike machine-made bricks and blocks, which have perfectly square edges, Adobe bricks are slightly irregular in shape. This feature is beneficial to the brick-laying process, as it allows for a greater range of precision rather than a rigid adherence to the line. With machine-made bricks and blocks, extreme precision is required in the lay-up of the walls because if one block is out, by even a fraction of an inch, it becomes abruptly evident. The required precision can only be obtained through years of training and practice. In contrast, very little training is necessary to be a successful adobe brick-layer. The bricks' slightly irregular shape alleviates the arduous attention to detail enabling any builder to quickly and easily lay-up the bricks. In addition, adobe walls have thicker mortar joints than conventional systems, allowing for an even greater range of lay-up precision. The mortar joints are 3/4” which can be reduced or increased slightly in order to construct a level wall.
Hybrid Adobe:
Hybrid Adobe is a revolutionary building material used to create low-cost insulated homes, sculptures, domes, garden walls, and more. Its sustainability makes it appealing to green builders. Its adaptability makes it more appealing. Hybrid Adobe combines recycled paper with earth, sand, and a binder to create a sustainable, inexpensive, strong, fibered material that can be poured, sprayed, or sculpted, to form blocks, logs, panels, walls, and an infinite variety of creative shapes.
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