Hi all, I would really love some advice or ideas about the earth walls of a building I have taken charge of.
Myself and my husband recently took over the care and maintenance of a building at the school where we live which has some earth walls. The previous designers and builders left in a bit of a hurry and although the building is complete and integral now, the earth walls have been left only partially filled in, so that the tyres behind the earth are somewhat exposed.
As the building is designed with the tyres and earth mainly for show and the main structure is concrete we think it would be ok to leave the walls exposed, although it does not look very pretty.
Some basic information about the site:
- The main building is made, as mentioned, of concrete and tyres, with 5 'alcoves' of earth walls around the outside
- We are in Central Thailand, probably around 350m above sea level
- The earth used in the earth walls, and all around the building, is heavy clay
We are mainly designing a forest garden and children's playground around the building and do not wish to become overly involved with the building itself, however,
here are some of our challenges:
- The director of the school is
unwilling to spend more money on completing the earth walls so if we are to finish filling them in it would have to be by hand
- The ground around the building has already been levelled to much lower than before so
if we are to get more earth it would have to come from further away
- That said, the director is very
keen to get the walls planted up ASAP so that they look good
- Since we are in a tropical environment, we think that the
earth may need to be landscaped in order to prevent erosion, but we do not know the best way to do this. There are already some signs of deep erosion channels from the few rainstorms we have experienced in the dry season, and when the rainy season begins in May we need to already have some kind of erosion control in place
- Bearing the above in mind, we were wondering if it would be appropriate to
make terraces on the earth walls? Our concern here being that they might encourage infiltration of water into the soil and thus into the foundations
- Also, as the walls need to be super low-maintenance, we were wondering if anyone has ideas for
tropical species with shallow roots which would be appropriate
Here are some photos of the earth walls themselves:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/153762705@N07/albums/72157679175293283
We would greatly appreciate any ideas and suggestions for what to do in this situation. It is clearly not ideal but we would love to turn the problems into solutions, with your help if you wish.
Thank you!
