Kirsten Cook

John Valdes wrote:I love the idea of the rammed earth bird houses!

We have a website that you can check out to see the finished birdhouses. We use scrap paper back form ply and regular plywood as the insert/inside form. The inside form is mounted on a piece of plywood for the bottom.

Kind of hard to explain. I’ve been thinking about teaching an online rammed earth course over the winter and will probably incorporate a birdhouse template.

Send me your email address so I can add you to our newsletter that will keep you up to date.

Oh my, I really have to apologize… it’s been almost a year and I haven’t replied to anyone on here! Well we have been busy with work and family. We are still wanting to build this eco village but probably won’t be for a few years yet. I have been connecting with Avalon Alliance for planning and building the eco village.

We are working in West Kelowna right now, building a feature wall in a fancy house.

Please feel free to PM me and we can chat there. Hope everyone is well!

Mahlon Barrault wrote:Hi Kirsten, we are in Vernon, BC now. It would be awesome to hear more about what you guys have on the go!

Hey guys! Are you living there now?

Hello! I am a part of a few friends to build a small community near the north Thompson/Okanagan area. My husband and I run a Rammed earth construction business (for the past 13 years) and are wanting to build all the homes with Rammed earth and off grid. Our members are  people that work at vineyards and wineries, and small scale farming. They also practice permaculture. We are consulting an eco village consultant called Avalon alliance to help with the transition. If this is something your interested in let me know! Thank you 😊

Rebecca Norman wrote:Beautiful house! I love rammed earth, the look, the cozy thermal mass, everything. It's very well suited to making a passive solar heated home if your chance to build anew ever comes up.

I live in a passive solar heated rammed earth home, but our rammed earth is not stabilised (just mud) and is a rougher technique so it is plastered.

Thanks Rebecca! Please post a link to pictures of your home, I would love to see them. We would like to build with no cement, which is possible, but unfortunately in Canada we need to have an engineer to sign off on our buildings. We have to build with with re-bar, cement and it has to be above a certain MPA strength or it will not pass code!

Passive solar is awesome- It is 5Celsius outside an the sun is shining right now. I had to open the windows because its sooo warm inside. Its been getting to 23C inside during the day.

I know this is a long shot, since most of the peeps on here are in the states (I am in Canada). We are looking to transition to an intentional community soon in the Okanagan, BC area. We have made ties with a few people that are interested in investing in some land. A little background on my husbands and i's business- https://permies.com/t/139093/Rammed-Earth-Passive-House-Intro

We would like to build passive rammed earth homes that are completely sustainable. If anyone is interested please reply Thank you

John C Daley wrote:Interesting concept. Do you find the 4000sq. feet too much?

Not really, I do like the openness of the rooms. But it can be a lot of space to maintain. He originally wanted it one level, but changed their minds I guess. He said he would have liked for it to be more of an efficient design, but you know, crazy ex woman was stubborn!

We will just have to build a super efficient Rammed earth house next! 😀

Orin Raichart wrote:I'd love to see a picture of the ash!  Not all ash is equal: some is a dirty grey, and some is a white  -I'd like to see to get an idea of how much combustion this ash gone thru.   The rocket mass heaters put out ash also so this leads me to my next question; what is the percentage of ash per earth ratio?

Again welcome!

Thanks 😊! Unfortunately I can’t share that information. I was told until the Research building project is done then I can share that info! Sorry!! The colour is I believe a slight grey, but there is no processing done, it’s a bi product, straight from the mill. Unfortunately not every pulp mill fly ash can be used, it has to be tested in the lab first.
But if you would like more info check out her publication
https://news.ok.ubc.ca/2018/04/23/new-research-modernizes-rammed-earth-construction/

Dr. Sumi is a very sweet woman and knows her stuff! She has many publications and papers done in engineering and other fields of education.

Hello! I am new here, and this is my first post. My significant other and I build Rammed Earth houses and other structures. We are located in Northern Alberta (Grande Prairie to be specific). We build with stabilized rammed earth, so basically concrete. Cool thing is that we wont be building with the same amount of cement soon. We are in partnership with with UBCO (University of BC Okanagan) to test pulp mill fly ash as a partial stabilizer for our product.

I'll get to the point here, Dennis built his rammed earth home 12 years ago with an atrium attached on the south west side. Well... the atrium isn't finished (yet), he built the deck and was intending to build the rest of it but you know.... life gets in the way especially with 4 children. The home is 4000 square feet and passive solar designed. He said it isn't at its full potential of passive solar design efficiency (his ex was against the whole efficiency thing and wanted the house a certain layout). I tracked the amount of btu's we use a year, and its under the average amount for Alberta. Which is cool- knowing we have a heated garage that isn't sealed well, and i'm assuming 4000 sqft is not the average footprint size of houses in Alberta. We are hoping to finish the atrium this year! We have some windows salvaged from a commercial rammed earth job we did at UBCO that we will be using on the atrium (SCORE!!).

So, I'm sure all of the permies here all know about the earthship buildings. Which are super cool! But unfortunately don't work well in in the northern hemisphere (from what I have read, I haven't experienced anything first hand). Well, those buildings are made with a type of Rammed Earth, our process is a little different. We form it the same way as concrete, then mix the aggregate, colour, cement and water in a mixer connected to our skid steer. We dump each mixed load (evenly) into the forms then tamp down every layer (lift by lift). A very time consuming and laborious job, that's for sure!!!

I have read about Sepp Holzer about 10 years ago and was inspired by his book for permaculture and sustainability. Since living with Dennis (on his 4 acre lot), we have inspired each others passions in sustainability, we will be building a natural pool. Have built a hugekultur garden, and we have bees and chickens! I love this way of life and have always aspired for this way of living. We aren't 100% sustainable but we will be there one day .

Thanks for reading my post, hope you enjoyed reading it! Let me know if you have any questions at all, I am more than happy to share our experiences, knowledge and day in the life. If you live in a passive solar home I want to see your pics! If you're interested in following our business on social media, we are Innovative Earth  on facebook. We do have linkedIn and Alignable. https://www.facebook.com/innovativeearth.ca/ is our facebook URL - I post many updates on here and pictures - please have a looksy

Hope all is well in everyone's life and everyone is keeping safe and living as sustainable as they can! <3 <3

PS I have attached a few photos of our front garden, house, atrium (which is way bigger than it looks in these pics btw-about 700 sq ft) to give you a glimpse of our home and product!