Carolien Wit

Hi Jennifer,

I had the same as you, very thin layer of clay. I also hoped that when the water would clear there would be more clay but it didnt grow much. I did some experiment with earthen bricks but they broke very easily. I am not expert at all in this subject but i think this ground does not have the charcteristic to keep itself togheter. Probably you have to add some clay?

The image doesn't seem to work. But I did some experiments, with sand, without sand, with less concrete and more but the samples all broke after drying. So this recipe doesn't work. It's a good point to think about clays that will not expand much. Now Ill be back to the idea to just recycle old brick (thats also used in the building plan). Still very interested in trying rammed earth, so if ill get to try a new recipe ill keep you posted.

Kind greetings

Hello Chris, thank you much for helping! yes that is actually the best idea. Just try it out ourselfes. Ill post about  the recipe if it will be good. We got the idea of rammed eart because we want to incoperate a rocket stove in the island and we red the material is great as a heat battery too.

Kind greetings from Netherlands

Hello Permies,

We were planning to do a big project in our house, since we found this forum we feel so inspired to build naturally. We would love to build our kitchen island walls from rammed earth.  They say mostly the recipe is 25% clay and 5% concrete and the rest sand.
We did an earth test and it looks like it has around 43% sand, 55% silt and 2% clay. Im trying to find the right recipe for rammed earth for our ground online but I can't find much about the silt part.
Somwere I red that it should consist of 25% silt/clay. But can you count silt as a clay? Doesn't it need more clay than only 2%?

Thank you so much with helping!