I want to build a mud house as a fun summer project. I want to start with something small like a tool shed or outdoors sitting area. I live in Georgia, US. There’s an abundance of red clay where I live. I do own my own land where I can easily harvest building material. If you have built something using mud before, what are your thoughts on this type of house? Do earth and clay make good insulation material? Does it shield you from potential stray bullets? Does it keep the noise out? Any book recommendations? Thanks in advance.
it's called adobe
Look into rammed earth or cob construction methods. Viability is contingent on your local resources. You can also look into sod homes for another historical alternative to stick or timber framing.
I've heard that it does do a good job at blocking sound. I've been looking into rammed earth mostly, my main worry with that is snowmelt and heavy rains during spring. Also heard that it doesn't do great at insulating during winter, but that's probably not as big of a deal in Georgia and in either case you could probably add insulation. Adding like 10% of cement should help bind the dirt together to stay intact with rain, maybe something like linseed oil could help make a protective layer from water too? Not sure what else could be done (or if there's good alternatives to cement), if anyone else has more info I'd love to know about it as well.
Wattle and daub buildings are covered in a layer of lime wash, which helps waterproof the underlying material.
Bro, you've understood it wrong. The thermal conductance is related to the quantity of straw in it. If you'd like to have high insulation level, you do double layer, first structural cob with 2,5m% straw or flax or reee and then you do an insulation plaster layer on top with 50m% straw.
You dont put cement in the wall. This hinders it's breathability and makes making it harder to make. Cob is sufficiently protected by the roof. If you have a lot of horizontal rain, you can consider lime plaster, but this is done on top.
In the arctic, you can combine ither insulation, like straw bales with cob.
For anyone genuinely interested, here's some design details
https://www.cobbauge.eu/en/technical-documentation/
https://verdantstructural.com/index.html#publications
International residential code appendix for cob in seismic/hurricane regions: https://www.cobcode.org/
>and makes making it harder to make
sometimes the English language is a shit
*Addition of cement causes the mixture to harden fast, which leads to loss of the desired plasticity of cob material. It's not desirable to form brittle and unbreathable cob. The material is by design flexible and elastic, thus embrittlening agent is a mistake. Without cement the drying process takes months. The whole point of cob is that it is fully reversible. However, this reversion to plastic state does not occur if protected with a roof and if capillary rise of moisture from ground is stopped.
Phone posting is a pain when overseeing a horde of minions.
For other methods that do use plant matter to help insulate, you're right, but for rammed earth (or compressed earth blocks) that isn't a component, and you do generally want cement to help bind the dirt together. This does also mean rammed earth and compressed earth blocks aren't as good at insulation, though.
Here I think it would be a better idea to use cement/rammed earth given the need for a basement since the frostline is deep enough. I'm not going to trust plain dirt and plant matter with that type of load. Depending on the situation though what's best can vary a lot.
If you have a limitless supply of clay id suggest building your house with that and then encapsulate the entire thing in a bonfire covered in dirt, the same way they used to make bricks. hopefully this will turn the structure into a gigantic kiln fired ceramic project you can live in. easy to clean too.
https://archive.org/details/rammedearthhouse0000east/
https://archive.org/details/rammedearthhouse0000unse
My question is do I need to do anything to the clay to be able to do something like that?
I have a ton of clay soil on my property, just curious if I need to process it.
Cob has been used for thousands of years, it's pretty tried and tested
You need to get all the moisture out one it's done. A month or two with dehumidifiers running and maybe another year before you can do anything that seals the cob. You can't use any cement renders that won't let vapour through and you need to make sure your roof and drains keep water away from the wall.
Ultimately the main reasons Cob isn't used in modern construction is because it's slow (need to allow every 1-2ft of wall to cure) and it needs very thick walls. Lots of land, lots of labour
Apparently this is a thing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic_house
Huh, I've always thought about this for interior spaces but that's neat.