Brief Guide To How To Build An Adobe House
The adobe houses mark a growing trend in architecture, hard to imagine while ago when this construction material was usually associated with pauperism. But as we pay increasing attention to costs and show more concern for the natural environment, the adobe homes become real housing alternative, viable and efficient. In brief, these are eco-friendly homes, built from a healthy material (a mixture of clay, straw and water, cut in bricks dried in the sun), a very good insulator and resistant to earthquakes at costs inferior to traditional houses made from bricks. Here are more details on how to build an adobe house.
Our example below is an adobe hut built in Thailand, with instruction and pictured coming via Matadornetwork.com The overall cost was assessed to be around 750 USD since the builders only used materials abundantly offered by Mother Nature. Of course, we are talking about an adobe hut, but the basic building principles can be extended to any other plans.
Start by drawing the plan of the house. Since you will mostly work with mud or clay, you can play with the design as the imagination dictates. Do not hesitate to turn to organic round shapes so the house gets an original final look.
The second step then is making the bricks. Wet the ground a day before, dig it up, mix husks, and add more water. Dance on the mix for 5 mins. Put in a homemade form (10cm x 20cm x 40cm works best for most situations). Let dry in the sun for a week. Materials you have at hand are garden hoe, dirt, rice husks or straw.
Dig a foundation then. With a few hours’ studying time on the internet and many large rocks or a few bags of cement, anyone can make a decent foundation. Dig into the ground about 10cm and use the bricks to make a form that rises out of the ground 20cm. Using large rocks looks very nice and minimizes the amount of cement you need, if any. Accessible materials are rocks and/or cement.
Start giving shape to the house then by raising the walls. Build layer by layer using the same mud mix used for the bricks as mortar to hold it all together. Can build a meter tall per day. For most adobe huts, the walls are done in just three days. To make sure the walls go up straight, use a homemade plumb-bob (a heavy nail tied to a string). For supporting the window and door openings, the free way is building arches with the bricks. Not hard and looks very nice too. Or go to the junkyard and buy a few pieces of scrap metal or wood to support the bricks above the opening.
Inside, since you work with adobe, I usually build the bed frame, bookshelves, benches, storage areas, and desks right into the building with the bricks I made. A lot of fun and looks nice. Also, the more built-in furniture you make, the stronger the whole structure becomes. As far as the roof is concerned, in this case, the builders used bamboo rafters and a grass roof. Scrap metal rafters and a large tile or tin roof are the simplest to build and need little maintenance.
