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| Adobe 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. 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 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. Adobe buildings that have substantial eaves to protect the walls and foundations to keep the adobe off the ground will require less maintenance than if the walls are left unprotected. Some adobe buildings have been plastered with Portland cement on the outside in an attempt to protect the adobe, but this practice has led to failures when moisture finds a way through a crack in the cement and then can't readily evaporate. When adobe is used as an exterior plaster it is either stabilized or replastered on a regular basis. Adobe is a good thermal mass material, holding heat and cool well. It does not insulate very well, so walls made of adobe need some means of providing insulation to maintain comfort in the building. Sometimes this is accomplished by creating a double wall, with an air space, or some other insulation in between. Another approach is placing insulating materials on the outside.
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RESOURCES ARTICLES: ADOBE: EXPERT
ADVICE |
 The
Adobe Story: A Global Treasure
by Paul Graham McHenry, 2000.Most Americans associate adobe with grand
haciendas in the deserts of New Mexico and Arizona. But this earthen building
material is used all over the world. Here a leading adobe architect and
builder surveys the use of adobe around the world, examines the state
of the adobe industry today, traces the evolution of adobe in New Mexico,
and offers a tour of New Mexico adobes from prehistoric Chaco Canyon to
such recent buildings as the Dar Al Islam mosque and Christ in the Desert
Monastery, both near Abiquiu.
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Adobe : Build It Yourself by Paul Graham McHenry, 1985. A bible for owner built adobe homes This book was written after teaching more than 1500 students a community college course by the same name. It is tightly focused on the questions and needs of the would be owner buider. While it deals primarily with the adobe styles and methods of the southwestern United States, it is a good general guide for the beginning homeowner. |
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Earth Construction Handbook: The Building Material Earth in Modern Architecture by Gernot Minke, 2000. Which building material 1 - Absorbs and desorbs humidity faster, and to a higher extent, than any other? 2 - Produces hardly any environmental pollution and can be recycled any number of times? 3 - Balances indoor climate and moisture thus creating an extremely healthy environment in which to live? The answer is EARTH. In nearly all hot-dry and moderate climates of the world earth has been the predominant building material. Earth construction techniques have been known for more than nine thousand years and, even today, one-third of mankind lives in earth houses. The Earth Construction Handbook provides a survey of applications and construction techniques, including physical data, and explains the materials specific qualities together with the possibilities of optimising these. The information given can be practically applied by engineers, architects, builders, planners, craftsmen and laymen who wish to construct cost-effective buildings which provide a healthy, balanced indoor climate.
The Good House Book : A Common-Sense Guide to Alternative Homebuilding by Clarke Snell, 2004. With this exquisitely illustrated guide, packed with 400 photos and illustrations, anyone can put environmentally friendly ideas into beautiful practice. Here’s an intelligent look at how a home is supposed to function and a variety of different building approaches. What’s important is finding the right solution to fit your individual needs, local climate, and natural resources. The broad range of topics covered include choosing a site; selecting materials; building with straw bale, cob, adobe, or rammed earth; and plugging into alternative home power systems. Interviews with six homeowners, and photos of the dream homes they built, provide invaluable insight. Clarke Snell is a builder with experience using a wide variety of materials and techniques, both conventional and alternative. The construction project closest to his heart is his own partially bermed, passive solar house, which he built in the mountains of western North Carolina.
Simone Swan: Adobe Building by Dennis Dollens, 2006. Like an organism sitting and breathing on its site in the Chihuahuan desert, the Swan House is a building of organic beauty and hybrid cultural intelligence. Simone Swan has created an architectural and environmental project that re-examines and promotes traditional adobe building while introducing compatible forms, such as the Nubian vault and dome. Swan studied with the great Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy in his Cairo studio and after his death in 1989 adopted his mission of helping house the world's poor. Simone Swan: Adobe Building is the first book to discuss and illustrate Swan's architecture while also chronicling one of her annual workshops in Dollens' first-hand account. Dollens suggests that by biologically analyzing historic adobe we may be able to hybridize its constituents as replacements for current toxic materials, creating new biomimetic, adobe-related building materials suitable for green architecture.
Ageless Adobe: History and Preservation in Southwestern Architecture by Jerome Iowa, 1985. This book provides practical details on methods of preservation and maintenance for old adobe buildings. The over 200 illustrations in the book along with directions on "how-to" will enable the do-it-yourself home owner as well as the professional architect or contractor to plan and carry out renovation. The author presents solutions to the problems of keeping an historic structure intact while repairing it and making it 20th century livable. The issue of energy conservation is discussed at length and the premise of the book is that historic integrity does not have to be sacrificed for energy efficiency. Rehabilitation is always preferable, usually possible and often more profitable than demolition.
Adobe Conservation by Cornerstones Staff, 2006. This richly illustrated guide is acknowledged as the best source for expert, field-tested information on the care and maintenance of historic adobe buildings--from small vernacular structures to the great Spanish Colonial missions. As a true "how-to" manual, it presents a user-friendly and straightforward approach to the assessment, maintenance, preservation and restoration of earthen buildings based on time-tested techniques. Subjects include: architectural styles and materials; tools and equipment; materials and supplies; emergency shoring; moisture testing in adobe walls; material selection, mixing and testing; making adobe bricks; repairing and rebuilding adobe walls; repairing cracks in adobe walls; mud and lime plastering; earthen and lime finishes; removing contra paredes; repairing corbels; inspecting vigas and corbels; splicing vigas; compliance with State and Federal cultural resource protection legislation; glossary of terms; and bibliography. Cornerstones Community Partnerships in Santa Fe, New Mexico is devoted to the preservation of the architectural heritage and community traditions in New Mexico and the American Southwest. Through its nationally honored technical assistance, applied learning and traditional building skills programs, Cornerstones has assisted more than 300 rural Hispanic and Native American communities with the preservation of historic and culturally significant earthen buildings. Cornerstones has developed and utilized the techniques in this book throughout the American Southwest since 1986. |
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A Sampler of Alternative Homes: Approaching Sustainable Architecture . This two-hour DVD, produced by Kelly Hart, provides an overview of sustainable building concepts. You can enjoy a look at a fascinating variety of homes and the creative people who built them! Discover how passive solar design and environmentally low-impact materials can be used to create comfortable and economical homes. See the use of both traditional materials, such as adobe, and innovative materials, such as papercrete and earthbags. This program offers a wealth of information about construction details and other considerations. It covers adobe block construction, piled adobe (similar to cob), rammed earth, both load-bearing and post and beam strawbale, earthships, earth-sheltering, cordwood, thin-shelled concrete domes, papercrete, earthbags, hybrid structures, and recycling various containers for housing. To watch a streaming video introduction to this program, click here.
For a VHS videotape of this program go to the STORE.
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Ceramic Houses and Earth Architecture: How to Build Your Own by Nader Khalili, 1996. This book shows how to build vaults, domes and arches with adobe blocks. It then goes on to suggest how to actually fire the structure like pottery, with a glaze. It is a fiscinating concept that has seen little use, partly because the firing process can be rather polluting. This book has been updated to discuss the SuperAdobe building method of building with earthbags.. I recommend this book to everyone who is interested in alternative building methods. |
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Adobe and Rammed Earth Buildings: Design and Construction by Paul Graham McHenry, 1997. A definitive work on all aspects of adobe brick and rammed earth building, on a global scale. Photos of examples from all over the world, and alternative design details to fit every climate and situation. Includes the UBC and New Mexico Code for adobe. |
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Casa Adobe by Karen Witynski, Joe P. Carr, 2001. Many people find the lines and textures of an adobe building at once seductive and compelling. This book is all about the unique aesthetic of houses made of mud. Third in a series of four books on popular residential design in Mexico and the Southwest, this book contains photos of spectacular adobe homes, inside and out, in New Mexico, Arizona, Texas and various places in Mexico. The book documents the evolution of adobe from its historic past to its most modern applications, including interior details and architectural elements. The authors chose well the buildings they use as examples for their premise that "adobe is an old tradition with a new future," the recurring theme of the book. |
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Adobe Details by Karen Witynski, Joe P. Carr, 2002. In vivid detail, Carr and Witynski reveal the elegant simplicity of the adobe design style: sculptural walls, nichos and bancos with contoured corners and softly flowing lines, breezy portales, stone-paved courtyards, and cross-cultural furnishings that exude warmth and grace. From rugged Arizona ranches and haciendas to contemporary Santa Fe homes, Adobe Details celebrates the natural materials - earth, wood and stone - that proudly bear evidence of the human hand. From adobe walls textured with agave fibers to hand-adzed vigas and gleaming Saltillo-tile floors, the adobe home is alive with rich surfaces that evoke a casual, timeless context. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Architecture for People: The Complete Works of Hassan Fathy by James Steele, 1997
Behind Adobe Walls: Sante Fe has lately become known as the Beverly Hills of the Southwestern U.S. Among its full-time residents are the Dennises, the husband and wife author-photographer team who host this tour of their neighbors' private homes. The owners and designers weigh in with their own words about creating these eclectic sanctuaries, making it a very personal tour.
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LA
Casa Adobe
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Adobe
Architecture
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Build
With Adobe
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The
Small Adobe House
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Back to Earth: Adobe Building in Saudi Arabia
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Adobe
Houses for Today: Flexible Plans for Your Adobe Home
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Pueblo
Architecture and Modern Adobes: The Residential Designs of William
Lumpkins
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Building with Earth: Design and Technology of a Sustainable Architecture
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Butabu :
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Adobe:
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Adobe & Cinva Ram Earth Block Information Kit If you aren't ready to build a Cinva Ram brick maker yourself but want extensive information on manual adobe making with slop molds, forms, and rams... then this is for you. This is more than 30 pages of information and articles on making and building with adobes. Some materials are from the 1930s-40s and many photos are shown of a ram and its operation to make soil blocks. Information describes soil testing, mixing, additives, curing , plus adobe construction codes, and building with soil blocks. Booklet #535 Building with Adobe & Stabilized-Earth Blocks, and #1720 Adobe & Sun Dried Bricks booklet are included. A floppy disk (PC format) of color photos and more information is included. All materials are xerographic.
Cinva Ram Plans Taylor Publishing offers an 11 page design-set of plans for making a CEB compressed earth block press ...aka Cinva Ram. (used by FernCo Metal to make the unit shown here. Design based on engineered specifications for manual earth block press is provided. Press was developed and engineered in third world countries for manual use. Welding of parts is recommended as part of assembly, and mechanical expertise is necessary to build these block presses. Xerographic, 40+ pages total information, sold "as is" as received from my resources. This means the plans are shown in mm, not inches, and you need a CAD or other program to convert; no lengthy assembly description is given. Booklet #535 Building with Adobe & Stabilized-Earth Blocks, and #1720 Adobe & Sun Dried Bricks booklet are included.
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PLANS
This one story Santa Fe Style ranch home has an attached two car garage and is based upon 24 inch wide straw bale (or adobe) construction on a concrete block foundation & concrete spread footings with crawl spaces and a partial basement. Though not designed as a passive solar house, it is designed for primarily hot weather climates. Natural interior plaster and natural exterior stucco are recommended. The interior square footage of the house portion is 2,336 square feet, measured on the inside of walls. In addition, the garage has 20 x 22 ft. clear inside dimensions. This home was originally designed for the main entrance to face east so that the kitchen is southeast for ‘ayurvedic' benefits – the plan also works well with the garage on the north side or by ‘flipping' the plan with the bedrooms on the south.
For more information about this plan, and many others, visit our sister site www.dreamgreenhomes.com, where you will find a wide range of plans for sustainable homes, greenhouses, small buildings, garages, and food storage space for sale. Dream Green Homes is a consortium of outstanding architects and designers, who have pooled their talent and expertise for your benefit. |
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earthbuilding.com Earth Building Foundation's informative site. greenhouse.gov.au
An excellent introduction to the uses and attributes of adobe. adobealliance.org
Simone Swan's Adobe Alliance promotes earthen architecture, especially
that inspired by the work of Hassan Fathy, through information and workshops. naturalhomes.org lists workshops from around the world related to adobe building. earth-auroville.com Auroville in India has been working with various aspects of earthen architecture and has much to share. eartharchitecture.org features information and sponsors workshops on all types of earth building. dwf.org a very nice tour of the use of adobe vault construction in Africa. mudcrafters.com specializes in adobe floors and earthen plasters, with lots of pictures and descriptions. fawebster.com Fred Webster Associates has posted some excellent articles on adobe codes, structural defects, and earthquake damage to historic buildings. swdesertsustainability.org this regional organization's site includes a recipe for "poured adobe" that uses both lime and gypsum. historychannel.com An article about adobe homes, with a link to sod homes as well. claymineadobe.com a commercial stabilized adobe brick manufacturer with references for archtiects, schools, etc. terrabuilt.com manufacturer of a compressed earthen brick machine that has a key/lock system eliminating the need for mortar. loeileelawadee.com making adobes Thai style. adobebuilding.com describes a unique system for molding stabilized adobe bricks...they also occasionally sponsor workshops. openfarmtech.org Open Source Ecology shows how their compressed earth block machine operates. |
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