Hey Mud Family,
After my friend Chris' house burned down in the LA fires one of our mud buddies seems to have the ear of the LA Times right now to have a shot to talk fire resistant mud building and affordable sustainable rebuilding.
Ray Cirino who I've been building a fire resistant cob house with out on the Mojave still lives part time in LA not too far from Fire Central. The Ojai fire of a few years ago came within yards of burning him out.
The house we're building up there is made almost entirely out of the local sand and clay, with eaves designed to not catch blown embers in a fire, high mass walls to keep it cool inside and steel shutters to protect the windows
He's designed an updated adobe block, more like a mud lego, to speed up mud building and we think we've found a machine to manufacture them on.
So there's a bunch of us who are getting serious about pushing mud building to rebuild LA better, cheaper, and safer with mud. The data is there. The ASTM standards are there. The International Building Code now has an earthen wall addendum and the folks who wrote it live in California for pete sake. We have the architects and builders whose earthen buildings have weathered the fires. So what else do we need to do to swing things toward natural building?
If you had that two seconds what would you want people to know? What resources would you point them to? Bonus points if you've got something self promoting. Who has plans and engineering ready to go? Who doesn't care so much about all that right now and is just going to start sculpting something in the ashes with their friends?
Also Chris could use a hand if you've got coffee money to spare.
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