How To Get Started With Rammed Earth Building

[Music] [Music] how's it going guys back at it again with another video we have mr. ray Clemens hello all the way from Tucson and he's going to show us how to do basically an introduction to rammed earth basics so at the end of the video we're gonna have something similar to this here and why we're doing this is when you want to get started with doing rammed earth projects you want to be able you want to test the soil that you have on your property or something that you might purchase locally as well so we're gonna basically go over how to make a very simple rammed earth mixture and a little bit of a form right there and then you'll be able to see basically the end result of what you're gonna be doing with the soil on your property a lot of people say start small here we're gonna start smaller so if you follow me on Instagram you would have seen I posted a number of times about doing some rammed earth benches and a beautiful fire pit so that's fully finished but I want to give you guys some really good information that get started so if you want to do some rammed earth projects on your own this is the best place to start alright first thing we're gonna do we're going to try to check our soil and one of the best ways to do that is with the jar tests so what we do is fill it halfway up with dirt have the rest of the way with water and then we're gonna shake it up there's a few different ways to do this and you know this is one of the easiest ones just shake it up and you can just let it sit what we're looking for is for the sand and the gravel to stratify here and then all of the stuff that's mixed up in the water here is the clay and the silt so clay in the silt is going to settle on the top here it's going to make a layer that's going to show us how much clay and silks on top how much gravel and sand is on bottom that's going to give us an idea of how much clays incorporated in this in the dirt here the clay content is very important for the rammed earth soil mixture so we just want to know what that is do a jar test we've done a couple samples here the original dirt here we see it showing a 37% clay content and we want to shoot more for 25% so we added some sand we got it down to 25% and that's what we're going to use to sample block here okay after we shook this one up and we let it settle we drew a line at the sand strata and then a line at the clay strata measure the entire distance and then do a percentage of how much clay is according to that full distance there so if we're looking for 25 percent clay on this guy say our line is up to two inches then a quarter inch of that is going to be clay on top three-quarters of an inch on the bottom it's going to be sand and gravel so that's how we get that 25 percent we're looking for alright let's get mixing so we have our screen dirt here we have some mortar sand here you can use wash sand or whatever type of sand you might find on your property but we got this out of the store we also have some Portland cement here so the mixture we're going to use is a seven to one mixture so we're doing seven dirt two sand one cement and those are all units right seven dirt two sand one cement so that gives us a 10 unit mix so we have a percentage there of what of each type of dirt so for this example we don't need that much dirt and for a cup size or we're going to use a 1 1 of these yellow cups as our unit size so we're gonna have that so we're doing three and a half cups of screen dirt screened a quarter inch I'm going to do 1 cup of sand and a half cup of Portland cement so that'll give us our 71 in the half version so three and a half one and a half so all right let's mix it together what we want to do is mix a dry first before we add any water so we got our sand throw in our cement and you could use a cup and use your hands choose your weapon the key is to just get it all mixed up into one color chopping block we're just gonna mix this until it's all one color till we get rid of all the tiger stripes [Music] okay I think that's pretty good now we're going to add water from here now that this was all mixed up so a little at a time and just mix it with your hands or with the cup or whatever you like we're gonna mix this to kind of a rained on consistency right so it rained pretty good and things aren't totally soaking wet anymore it's just kind of wet and you can make a mud ball out of it you know that's kind of what we're looking for when you're mixing this you really want to get in there make sure you get down to the bottom corners there's gonna be dry spots at the bottom just get in there and it's really giving you an idea of what its gonna be like when you put the stuff in the mixer there's going to be dry spots that you have to get to so something just think about as you're doing this get it all the same wetness it might be good to have gloves my hands are a little bit more a little stronger now since I've been working with this if your fingertips are feeling tender you might want to have some gloves on it's up to you this way I feel like I'm really getting to know the dirt though because I have my fingers on it I can feel how much sand is in it I can feel how slick some of the spots are so we're getting to a good position here where it's clumping up in my hand and it's staying together as a ball so we know we're pretty close on the moisture content I can feel it in my fingertips that this is just what we're looking for okay so now we have our dirt mixed and ready we're gonna set that aside for a second and set up our formwork okay so let's talk about the formwork a little bit so just thinking about what that formwork is in full scale I've brought that down to a smaller scale so I just have some 1 by 6 hardwood here that I found at the hardware store comes in 1 foot lengths you know one foot by whatever 2 foot 3 foot so I've got a couple pieces here I cut 2 pieces for the end boards here this is a 1 inch by 2 inch there maybe 4 inches tall then these guys are 1 inch by 12 inch and it's 4 6 inches tall here also so we've got two of these two of these we'll set these up together just like the rammed earth so 2 side boards to end boards and we're going to clamp them together with some small clamps so just like in the full-scale we're just doing this small scale so we got boards we got clamps so I'm just going to clamp that on there get another clamp clamp this one here I've done this with just one clamp and the sideboards try to push out so I got some bigger more heavy-duty ones gonna do these also clamp T is on the bottom here okay get them nice and tight and that's looking good I also have another piece here just the same size as the end boards and this is going to be our tamper you want to think about or one thing you want to have is a base so when we have a base then we have our rammed earth wall sitting on top of something and I like to do this in a way that makes something beautiful that could last a while so I make these as little bonsai Ram birth walls and this is just my way of making more little bonsai stuff I have a few bonsai trees at home and I just like to play around with small-scale bonsai stuff and it also gives me a way to like think about architectural ideas on a small scale that I can push forward into a larger scale someday so I'm going to put the rammed earth wall on this base here and this is just a sample it's a bamboo flooring sample I got a whole pack of these and now they're just sitting in the closet so what I would what do I want to do with them I want to get them some kind of use so I'll put them to work here and it's that simple put it on top this guy right here you can pick it up like this because we put some screws in the bottom we're just going to skip that part for now and just if you want it to hold nice tight put some screws in the bottom and you'll be able to pick it up like that now we can tamp away I'm going to do a handful at a time so thinking thinking more about the full scale maybe I'll do two handfuls at a time so we're doing one lift at a time right layer by layer by layer going all the way up so I'm gonna put some dirt in level it out and then just tamp it down so one nice and easy and then come back and do it a little tougher and that's one done lift number two as you're going up you might want to check that these stay tight I've had some of these blow out so just something to think about and also when you get on the bigger ones you're going to think of it you're going to want to double check that your pipe clamps are still tight and nothing's moving on you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] there we go we're at the top of this and the great thing about doing these small-scale walls like this is you can pull the forum's off right away when we do larger scale stuff we want to let them sit in the forum for at least 24 hours that can take up a bunch of your time if you're trying to get your color tests or your soil cement ratios right so this way we can pull this right off and we can see what happens there it is that's pretty so this is a really nice the sand and the dirt sand cement ratio looks really good here it's not too chunky on front if you have too much gravel or too much clay you might see some more chunky texture going on on the front here this I'm happy with I would go with this on a full sized wall another great thing about these small samples is they're thin so they're gonna dry really quickly so maybe in an hour maybe an half hour hour hour and a half depending on how hot it is outside you can see this thing dry and the dry color is really what you're going to end up with when you do your full-scale wall so this is our dry color here much more light and gray than this really saturated brown that we have when we're wet getting the true color you have to wait till it's dry and that's we're making samples can take up some time that you might not have there we go we built a sample and we've gotten familiar with our soil and our soil content or soil mixture what's really cool about doing rammed earthen I think it's probably one of the main reasons why you do it is because you're using local materials you're using natural materials so we use about 400 pounds of Portland cement for just the benches and for the for the fire pit now if we were to do entirely ready-mix concrete I calculated it we'd need over 5,000 pounds of concrete so straight ready mix concrete 5,000 pounds over 60 something bags so we're able to save a lot of concrete and a lot of the the process or the energy that went into making the concrete and just by using some of the earth that we have on our ground yeah that's one of the real big benefits of rammed earth we're reducing that Portland cement quantity in our building project by a lot right by 90 percent in this case where we're working on that because Portland cement is one of the biggest contributors to global warming gases across the planet five to seven percent by some calculations so we in the natural building world really want to build without submit and everybody in the rammed earth world is trying to figure out how to do that but at this point we're building mass walls with as little cement as possible so we're still using just a little bit and as little as we can get away with of this Portland cement so we can make our walls a little bit stronger a little more stabilized and a little more waterproof if we did this all just earth in certain circumstances if you're really really good with your soil content you can make it work but in most circumstances you need that stabilization that the cement offers you so we use a little bit just as much as we need to to get by awesome guys thanks so much for watching if you live in the Tucson or in the Phoenix area and you really want to have either maybe like a Rambler shower wall some benches fire pits you've done a lot of different types of projects what other cool things have you done yeah doing bath houses benches fire pits shower walls yard walls and we're moving into the bigger production into doing full size houses so if you're looking for a full size house we do rammed earth straw bale earth bag tires anything in the sustainable world give us a call rates contact information will be also in the description box so if you want to check them out do that he's gonna be helping us with our house so we're gonna start construction on a rammed earth house this coming winter and that's gonna be pretty exciting you'll be seeing a lot more of Ray and we'll be seeing a lot more of rammed earth awesome thanks so much for watching guys we'll catch you on the next video talk to you soon peace if you have a do-it-yourself attitude and an interest in natural building methods then keep on watching you may feel interested in a natural building method like rammed earth but feel overwhelmed by the process I get it it's hard to find crystal clear instructions on how to actually do it on top of that starting with a rammed earth wall or even a house can be a big project so I recommend when people first get started with rammed earth that they get started with a really small project that way you can build your confidence learn the process and then move on to bigger and more complex projects my name is Ray Clements I'm the designer and architect for natural building works and I've been working with rammed earth for over five years I've created a do-it-yourself video course called rammed earth basics where you have me as your instructor with over three hours of clear precise instructions I show you how to build a beautiful set of rammed earth benches and a fire fit that we're gonna dazzle and amaze your friends for years to come whether you're completely brand-new to construction or a seasoned do-it-yourselfer I go through each step in great detail so you come out with a beautiful finished product rammed earth is a natural building method that uses a combination of local earth Portland cement and sand this building method has been used for thousands of years and has an amazing look and feel what's really great about this method is it uses local soil which really cuts down on the amount of cement that we use this is important because cement is an energy intensive material and a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions by building with rammed earth you're helping reduce your carbon footprint and creating a unique project that will match your landscape and last a lifetime take on this DIY project and build your family a beautiful place to build memories for years to come [Music] you

Channel: Handeeman

Views: 206,739

Rating: 4.8904543 out of 5

Keywords: life inside box, derek howlett, handeeman, diyhomesteadprojects, rammed earth, natural building, earthship, rammed earth wall, rammed earth building, diy, how to

Id: 3RyHy1bNJuU

Length: 16min 45sec (1005 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 23 2018