Rodney Wade

Sorry for the confusion...it's an exterior garden type wall...I've seen many rammed earth walls...this will be a retaining wall.  It's purpose is to hold back the hill. I would need to stabilize it somehow. I was thinking 5-10% Portland.   I do have some clay, but don't think it's enough to stabilize long term.  It appears though that a plate compactor is more for vibrating irregular grains into voids where rammed earth needs more force to compress for cohesion.

Alan Loy wrote:Looks to be a good alternative to bashing those tyres!  Will you end up with similar mass and insulation to the tyres method?

I would think turning those bags 90° would get you similar thickness to a tire and thus the insulation.

I would think rammed earth would be faster than the earth bags if you reused your forms and had plenty of labor.  I'm not sure your machinery available but a skid steer or loader can fill as fast as you can tamp.  That can be by hand, pneumatic tamper, or other means.  Speed wise....it's hard to beat stick built.  Templates can be made and you can produce factory like efficiency building panels.  Left wall, right wall, front and back then roof it.  If Snow and Roof load isn't a concern a simple 1 direction pitched roof can make it even faster.  Lots of ideas on mass production, but without know some more specifics it's hard to give any further advice.

I'm looking at building a 12-18" rammed earth berm for my house. It will be 3.5-4' tall and act as a retaining wall.  I am working solo and have roughly 100-200ft to build eventually.  I purchased a towable air compressor that I'm now not exactly sure is going to run.  My original plan was to build some forms, use local soil (fine sandy loam) and 5-6% concrete to stabilize and compact using a backfill tamper.  The more I think about it, I was wondering if anyone had used a plate compactor for rammed earth?  It would seem fairly easy for me to build the forms around the compactor, compact it to the top and roll it off the forms using some ATV ramps. Having the forms the width of the compactor would mean I would fill, run the compactor back and forth for a few minutes...rinse and repeat.  Has anyone tried this method? Results?  My forms would be 3/4 plywood with 2x6 walers and 4x4 strong backs dug 2' into the ground.   Thanks for any information.