Brenton Reimann

Hi Mike, I've been watching your youtube of the tear-down and looking over your plans with great interest.

My wife and our 3 kids (8, 10 and 12) are owner building our own home in South Australia, Australia.

We were planning for many years to build the ground floor external walls out of puddled mud bricks. However we're at the stage of having the post and beam timber frame up, and roof on, and now I came across compressed earth blocks, and am excited for the potential faster brick making speed.

What I am wondering is this:  our puddled mud bricks were going to be 250x250x120 mm high (or in imperial 10" x 10" x 5" approx). I would like to modify your plans, to make blocks at least 250x250x100 mm high. Or 10"x10"x4".

Do you, or anyone else, see any issues with this? Would the blocks be compressed enough? Would that size block be better in a hydraulic powered press, not a manual press? I'm not too keen going hydraulic as it's more costly and complicated. I would prefer to stick with a manual press.

Thankyou for your thoughts.

Hi there Mike, this thread has been so helpful for us here in Australia, my wife and i and our 3 kids are building a mud brick home, and have decided to seriously look at doing CEV instead of traditional mud bricks.

My question for you is, your plans are awesome... but i need them ideally in metric!! I know you first got yours in metric... and the links to those plans don't work anymore.

Have you got any ideas re how I could get plans for the metric version?

I'm willing to convert off your imperial sketchup and plans you put on the thread, but would prefer not to if possible.

Anyway, love you youtube vids, the tear-down one is GOLD!!

This makes it all much more possible for others, appreciate your time and efforts to share it, it always is a great thought, but most people don't take the time to share, like you have.

Thanks again,

Brenton
Moorook, South Australia, Australia