Hello from Maine

I am interested in green architecture and study EarthShips and 70's passive solar homes. Like David Wright AIA. See the book "esign for a Limited Planet", such cool architecture :

http://www.amazon.com/Design-Limited-Planet-Norma-Skurka/dp/0345252411

I recently discovered these bricks that are like Lego to build a house similar to rammed Earth but super easy :

http://picasaweb.google.com/gracey/BangladeshTripWithHabitatForHumanity#5175855679534953618

and

http://picasaweb.google.com/gracey/BangladeshTripWithHabitatForHumanity#5175855688124888226

Have you seen that ?

I think it would be nice to have one of those, maybe I could have an Earth friendly cabin built in one summer ?

I wonder if there is a brick house that can be Earth bermed and passive solar and self sustaining ?

Have fun!
Craig

spystyle wrote:
Hello from Maine

I wonder if there is a brick house that can be Earth bermed and passive solar and self sustaining ?

Sounds like the perfect house, does anyone have any experience with these bricks?

I've built with CEBs, kinda similar, but we used mortar:
http://www.velacreations.com/cebfloors.html

what the world really needs is open source, free plans for these types of machines.  I have seen these types of machines for years, and plans cost at least $50, built machines are over $1,000, just for the machine.

There is a man in the village that has one, though it doesn't do interlocking, just plain bricks.  I may take it apart and document it.

LOL, I see there is already a discussion here :

http://www.permies.com/permaculture-forums/87_0/green-building/compressed-earth-blocks

I missed it, oops!

This is similar to stacked concrete block construction. Here is a site that has a similar product (http://www.haenerblock.com/haener_direct.html).

This has some interesting aspects. I would want to bury/berm the house to add some thermal mass.

CEB's have a lot of thermal mass, unlike dry stacked concrete blocks.

Most builders do a double wall system with insulation or dead air space between the 2 CEB walls.

I find the linked to blocks to be pricey. But you could squirt insulation into those spaces maybe ?