How To BUILD A RAMMED EARTH WALL: Sustainable & STRONG!

In today's tutorial, we learned how to make a rammed earth wall! Rammed earth is composed of clay, sand, gravel, and a small portion of cement to act as a stabilizer. Ray shows us some of his completed projects in Tuscon, and then we dive into the demo!

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[Tysca_]

This is a really impressive building method. I'm beyond pleased to see that it's being done with such professional and natural and aesthetic results.

Rammed earth is a building material used by only three groups on the planet today: 1. The very poor, 2. The very rich, 3. The people who live in Arizona.

Gets a bad rap compared to our cardboard houses with 16" spacing. The pigmented concrete is clever and beautifully done. Kudos, and good luck on further perfecting your processes!

[Guavauava]

Have you considered adding powdered basalt or basalt fibers? Basalt reacts with co2 and converts it into a mineral (dolomite, calcite, etc). I’m wondering if that would strengthen the wall even further, maybe we could reduce the amount of cement. Basalt is naturally occurring and absorbs co2 at a rate of 92%, so using it is carbon negative. Seawater hold a lot of co2, so that could be used to mix the materials instead of regular water. Some ideas!

[welder]

I used to own an electric Bosch demo hammer which had a 4X4" tamper attachment. It seems like a good middle ground between the hand tamper and the pneumatic hammer. I once took the shank from a broken spade bit and welded the 8x8" head from a broken hand tamper to it and it. It doubled my efficiency. The only drawback was I couldn't store it in the same box as the rest of the bits. That's not even a real problem.

[marcedwards]

I built a rammed earth home in Georgia in 1990. The house was awesome. Super efficient and I’d put it up against an F1 Tornado any day. Not new construction but 2000 year old tech.

[anthonydunn]

Bro if you just hooked that pneumatic press up to a brick press you could 'pre-tamp' your materials for building sites, literally just laying the bricks down into the molds between layers of mortar. (The bricks could be hidden or visible). When there's enough pressure on raw sand or other materials they become -what engineers call- "stabilized Earth", so your pneumatic setup (and maybe a gearbox) could press out bricks that are stable at 0% concrete, then place those inside your walls using the 7 or 10% concrete materials sprinkled in between and around the bricks.

[uiagraphics-customprinting]

Great work and thank you for this video. I have been searching for RAMMED EARTH HOUSES and BUILDERS for many years now. This is a very nicely done and well informative.

[TheSedevacantist]

Solid. Good drop test tip. I can imagine I'd never read about it in a book, so I'm glad you dropped that one. Makes sense. Thanks.

[muhammadfajartrianto]

In Indonesia it was named batako, use peneumatic press to form a block of brick.

[mechupatreshuevos]

thank you for teaching us. good job! greetings from Argentina

[oldschool]

Soil cement was a common way to build rural roads in the 1930's. They are very durable.

[fabolvaskarika]

It’s very labour intensive, but beautiful and the bonus that it’s environmental friendly makes it worth. Thanks god, that there are people like you, who has the knowledge and willingness to do, also for the people who put extra money to order a job like this. I guess, it’s would be faster, cheaper with concrete/brick/ prefabricated materials, etc… but the ecological footprint of those technologies are much bigger, so I highly appreciate what you do.

[NotAffiliated]

How well does rammed earth work in wetter climates?

[akalaification]

Wow bruh. You are pretty amazing with your knowledge and willingness to share. Big thumbs up. I will now probably do something like this in the future if I need to build a wall. Thank you.

[lacypinyotlesueur]

Ray! This video was recommended on myYoutube feed! You’re absolutely killing it bro! Keep up the amazing, inspiring work! Much love from Lacy

[addrock]

Is there a foundation?
When I did stone work, it was all about the foundation, to be thick enough and wide enough to hold the massive weight of the material used. Surely a house wall must weigh a substantial amount considering the height of the walls.
His mix and construction method and the engineer who signed off on the it, can’t expect it to be built on soil?
I’ve seen a lot of expensive stone columns, garden walls etc, slowly tilting over, because of cost cutting on the most important and critical part of the build..

[DanBurgaud]

0:37 "... ten thousand waves.... "
AMEN! that wall is BEAUTIFUL!

[sela.kantugospel]

Seu trabalho é perfeito e fica lindo essas cores!!! Parabéns!!!

[originalfallinggirl]

This s fantastic. I always wondered how this was done. You rock!

[andrewhoward]

This method of construction was used for the gift shop at the Sparrenburg Castle in Bielefeld, Germany- it looks dreadful, but it's fashionable I suppose!
In your context it looks interesting and beautiful.

[jameslopez]

Great video demonstration brother! Tucson Arizona Desert is my home! ❤️