Rammed Earth Blog - Articles about Building with Rammed Earth

Japanese Gate – Building the rammed earth

March 28, 2009 by admin

Building the walls for the Japanese Gate in Peace Park was a pleasure, the people with the Japanese garden society were wonderful to work with. Located in downtown Ganges on Salt Spring Island the gate is a great architectural improvement to the town.

footings

Building the footings.

footing-steel

Placing the steel in the footing.

pouring-concrete

Pouring concrete.

forming-wall

Forming the first wall.

mixing

Mixing the first batch.

building-wall

building the first wall.

ramming-wall

Thea ramming as the wall is nearly complete.

creation

Clifton, Yashwant and Rudy in front of our latest creation.

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The morning sun is starting to shine on the newly exposed wall.

end-panel

Putting up an end panel.

install-chamfer

Installing a chamfer.

wall

working on the second wall.

wall-perspective

Wall 2 from another perspective.

gate-woodworking

Micheal Draglan working to complete the woodworking for the gate.

Rammed Earth Greenhouse Wall- Chemainus, B.C.

March 24, 2009 by admin

Why build a rammed earth wall for a greenhouse? The main reason is to store heat and increase the growing season. The thickness of the rammed earth wall allows for solar energy to be absorbed and released slowly, this helps to increase the temperature at night as the heat is slowly released. During the spring and fall when the weather is cooler but the sun is still shining, it will raise the greenhouse temperature and help to increase the growing season. As you can see from the layering and pieces of marble, granite and slate we can use our creativity to create art as well!

rammed-earth-greenhouse-chemainus-bc

The Finished Wall.

rammed-earth-greenhouse-chemainus

Rammed earth layers.

Gary’s Garage – 3-D model

March 22, 2009 by admin

This is the 3-D model for Gary’s rammed earth garage on Salt Spring Island, B.C. This is building is not insulated so we decided to use a 1′ wall thickness on this project. The Garage doors are slanted in for both aesthetic and practical site constraints. You will notice as the pictures come in of the completed project that there has been a deviation from the original design but this was the original intention when we started.

rammed-earth-garage

The view of the garage from the south.

rammed-earth-garage-model

A perspective view from the south east, those are glass block windows on the side for those who are wondering.

Building the Chemainus Greenhouse Wall

March 11, 2009 by admin

We built the Chemainus greenhouse wall on Vancouver Island, B.C. just outside Duncan. This project was a collaboration with Scott and Carla, the owners.

nailing-footing

Nailing a board to the footing that will hold the forms in place.

rammed-earth-forms

Nailing the strongback to a whaler. For these rammed earth forms we used materials that Scott already had, which meant smaller whalers so we added an extra strongback because of the length of the wall.

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