Another Possible Low Cost Shelter

It's nice but adobe and cob are much simpler to make. Suitable soil for rammed earth is not as common as the article suggest. Just like all clays aren't suitable for making adobe or bricks. Lumber and steel are largely used
as labor saving measures not as more suitable building material. However, a well planned structure will used as much locally sourced material as practically possible.

To answer several questions at once, there are several good books out on building rammed earth houses, with simple tools but very labor intensive; the Mother Earth news was very heavily into this back in the 80's;

as for the tamp the are showing, use a grave digger's tamp; also mix portland cement in the soil for stabilization at a 25% ratio, but make sure if you are doing a true rammed earth structure to use the correct ratio of width to height for your walls.

There are many examples of these type structures in the southwest u.s.

another rather inexspensive and easy to build underground type shelter is to build a geodesic dome using rebar, wire, and gunite or shot-crete; just my 2 cents, y'all, but the possibilities are endless.



seeker

I was thinking something like this, to avoid the heavy plate issue


just a few stitch welds should hold it together nicely.

reply to post by hotrodturbo7



Ive built these lever brick ram presses and they arn't very complicated. If you can cut and weld, you can build one of these fairly quickly. Under a week. I didn't use anything thicker than 1/4 plate either. I have a brickmaking blog with some pics of the presses ive made. If you have any questions please ask. Maybe I can help.
rwhendrix

makingbricks.blogspot.com...