Adobe Homes

Today, it is estimated that nearly half of the world's population live in earthen structures, adobe, rammed earth, and other more primitive structures. - Daniel Chiras The Natural House

Adobe is the ideal material for the beginner. It is a warm, kind material that is forgivingcurved brickes. of mistakes, and amenable to change. If you don't like what you have wrought, it is a simple matter to take it down and try again. - Paul Graham McHenry Jr. Adobe: Build it Yourself

Traditional adobe bricks are not as vulnerable to moisture as one might assume, and rainfall have a negligible effect on fully cured bricks. Clay will limit moisture penetration, only the surface will be wet. Concentrated streams of water, however must be kept off bricks. - Paul Graham McHenry Jr. Adobe and Rammed Earth Buildings

The walls of a 2,000 sq.ft. ranch house built with a wooden frame weigh about 10 tons. The walls of an adobe home the same size would weigh nearly 340 tons. - Daniel Chiras The Natural House

Slaked lime (hydrated building lime) is also a valuable additive to adobe. It stabilizes adobe bricks and reduces the absorption of moisture. It also increases the compression strength of adobe bricks. - Steve Berlant, The Natural Builder, Vol. 1, Creating Architecture from Earth.

A Twelve-inch adobe block wall has an R-value of about 4.0. Although adobe walls offer little resistance to heat, loss, their ability to store heat helps offset the low R-value. Direct solar gain on walls also helps compensate for their low insulation value.

The sense of creating shelter out of mud and earth is as primal as what must have been the first potter's amazement in creating an earthen vase; as the clay is manipulated, the potter gives it life and shape, resulting in a natural beauty that no straight line can offer. - Orlando Romero and David Larkin, Adobe: Building and Living with Earth.

An Adobe structure, properly built, is in that earthen comfort zone that tempers the harshest of climates; it is efficient shellter in the searing desert heat of Arizona or Saudi Arabia, the windy reaches of East Anglia, or the snowy mountain regions of Asia. - Orlando Romero and David Larkin, Adobe: Building and Living with Earth.

The softly flowing walls and rounded corners create a gentle, comforting, and secure feeling space.

Adobe homes:-
Advantages :-

1. Adobe is widely and locally available inexpensive resource and could provide housing for millions, specially in impoverished nations.
2. Adobe codes have been adopted by many building departments.
3. adobe has low embodied energy.
4. Adobe bricks can be made on site by hand or by machine, reducing the transportation demand ultimately cutting energy use and pollution. Its also commercially available.
5. making adobe bricks requires minimal skill and are fairly inexpensive. Its one of the easiest of all natural materials to work with.
6. Adobe walls are fairly easy to build, requiring little skill and few tools.
7. Adobe's thermal properties make it an ideal building materials for homes heated by passive solar energy.
8. Adobe building stay warm in winter and cool in summer in arid climates with cool nights.
9. Its a great sound insulator, and living in an adobe home is quiet and peaceful.
10. Cab be easily recyclable. broken bricks can be used with mud while intact bricks form demolished structures can be used to build new walls.
11. Adobe can be used to build houses of a wide variety of architectural designs, even Victorian.
12. Adobe building lends itself to artistic expression.
13. Adobe walls are fireproof.

Disadvantages :-

1. Building adobe bricks and walls is labour intensive and can be costly if hired people to do that.
2. Adobe wall construction is hard work.
3. Traditional adobe bricks making is limited by weather and climate. It is unsuitable to cold or wet areas.
4. Adobe bricks cannot be made during freezing or wet weather.
5. Squirrels and insects, notably termites, can burrow through adobe walls, weakening them though plaster reduces this problem.