A Turning of the Soil
Building an Earth House by Hand
by Ellen Rowland
 Building with earth is both environmentally and socially responsible. This is the first-person story of how one New York City family, inspired by earth building promoter Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy and pushed by the 2008 economic crisis, designed and built their own 2,500 square foot wind- and solar-powered house in Senegal, West Africa with rammed earth and earth bricks.
Writes Ellen Rowland, "The walls of our house were built using the earth under our feet, water from our well, a few pieces of plywood and iron, and eighteen pairs of hands, including our own. Our children, then three and four, learned to make earth bricks by throwing mud into wood frames and watching the sun turn them into usable bricks, which they then helped lay."
Click here to read the complete article in PDF format. You'll find more information about earth as a building material, including its advantages and disadvantages, building codes, resources, and photographs.
Ellen Rowland is an American living living abroad. Her family built an off-the-grid earth house. She is a writer of sustainable issues, fiction, humor, and poetry.
|
