I am looking for some help with planning the facing wall of a house that I am building.
The house is built into the side of a hill, with one side of the basement level opening out into the downhill side, as a tuck-under garage. The wall for this side of the garage is poured concrete, about 11 feet high.
I want to finish the outside surface of this wall with a battered stone face that mimics the stone facing of the rammed earth walls that are typical for the earthen works of Japanese castles, so it appears that the living level of the house stands on an earthen rampart.
I think the location where I am (western WI) has soil with a clay content that will be suitable for rammed earth. There is also an abundance of limestone, fractured into slabs, that resulted from excavating the foundation into the hillside. I would like to make a battered rammed earth wall on the outer surface of the poured concrete wall, for the full 11' height, using the concrete wall as the back side of the form.
Would I be able to use the limestone slabs recovered from the site as a facing for the exterior surface of the rammed earth wall? Ideally I would like to line the front side of the form with them, compact the earth/cement mixture against the inside surface of the slabs, then remove the forms and display the outer surface of the slabs as the facing of the wall.
Is there too big a risk that facing slabs will not be stable over time? There is a poured concrete footing under the entire area where the rammed earth wall will stand, which extends down past the frost line in my area (42").
Any help or advice that you guys can give would be welcome. I would like to build something more authentic than a stone facing over wood framing.
