Earth materials include minerals, rocks, soil and water. These are the naturally occurring materials found on Earth that constitute the raw materials upon which our global society exists. Earth materials are vital resources that provide the basic components for life, agriculture and industry. [1] [2] [3]
The type of materials available locally will of course vary depending upon the conditions in the area of the building site. Take considerations of what is explained below.
In many areas, indigenous stone is available from the local region, such as limestone, marble, granite, and sandstone. It may be cut in quarries or removed from the surface of the ground (flag and fieldstone). Ideally, stone from the building site can be utilized. Depending on the stone type, it can be used for structural block, facing block, pavers, and crushed stone.
Most brick plants are located near the clay source they use to make brick. Bricks are molded and baked blocks of clay. Brick products come in many forms, including structural brick, face brick, roof tile, structural tile, paving brick, and floor tile.
Caliche is a soft limestone material which is mined from areas with calcium-carbonate soils and limestone bedrock. It is best known as a road bed material, but it can be processed into an unfired building block, stabilized with an additive such as cement. Other earth materials include soil blocks typically stabilized with a cement additive and produced with forms or compression.
Rammed Earth consists of walls made from moist, sandy soil, or stabilized soil, which is tamped into form work. Walls are a minimum of 12″ thick. Soils should contain about 30% clay and 70% sand. [4]
The use of locally available and indigenous earth materials has several advantages in terms of sustainability. They are:
Reduction of energy costs related to transportation. Reduction of material costs due to reduced transportation costs, especially for well-established industries. Support of local businesses and resource bases. Care must be taken to ensure that non-renewable earth materials are not over-extracted. Ecological balance within the region needs to be maintained while efficiently utilizing its resources. Many local suppliers carry materials that have been shipped in from out of the area, so it is important to ask for locally produced/quarried materials.
Both brick and stone materials are aesthetically pleasing, durable, and low maintenance. Exterior walls weather well, eliminating the need for constant refinishing and sealing. Interior use of brick and stone can also provide excellent thermal mass, or be used to provide radiant heat. Some stone and brick makes an ideal flooring or exterior paving material, cool in summer and possessing good thermal properties for passive solar heating. Caliche block has been produced for applications similar to stone and brick mentioned above. Caliche or earth material block has special structural and finishing characteristics.
Rammed earth is more often considered for use in walls, although it can also be used for floors. Rammed earth and caliche block can be used for structural walls, and offer great potential as low-cost material alternatives with low embodied energy. In addition, such materials are fireproof.
Caliche block and rammed earth can be produced on-site. It is very important to have soils tested for construction material use. Some soils, such as highly expansive or bentonite soils, are not suitable for structural use. Testing labs are available in most areas to determine material suitability for structural use and meeting codes.
Soils for traditional adobe construction are not found in some areas, but other soils for earth building options are available. Many areas have a high percentage of soils suitable for ramming. (Official areas are approximately 19,610 acres in the Austin, TX area, according to the US. Department of Agriculture).
Caliche is also abundant in many areas (covering 14% of the Austin geographic area, for instance) and is readily available locally. [5] [6]
Adobe is a building material made from earth and organic materials. Adobe is Spanish for mudbrick. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of earthen construction, or various architectural styles like Pueblo Revival or Territorial Revival. Most adobe buildings are similar in appearance to cob and rammed earth buildings. Adobe is among the earliest building materials, and is used throughout the world.
A brick is a type of construction material used to build walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Properly, the term brick denotes a unit primarily composed of clay, but is now also used informally to denote units made of other materials or other chemically cured construction blocks. Bricks can be joined using mortar, adhesives or by interlocking. Bricks are usually produced at brickworks in numerous classes, types, materials, and sizes which vary with region, and are produced in bulk quantities.
Masonry is the craft of building a structure with brick, stone, or similar material, including mortar plastering which are often laid in, bound and pasted together by mortar. The term masonry can also refer to the building units themselves.
In building design, thermal mass is a property of the mass of a building that enables it to store heat and provide inertia against temperature fluctuations. It is sometimes known as the thermal flywheel effect. The thermal mass of heavy structural elements can be designed to work alongside a construction's lighter thermal resistance components to create energy efficient buildings.
Stonemasonry or stonecraft is the creation of buildings, structures, and sculpture using stone as the primary material. Stonemasonry is the craft of shaping and arranging stones, often together with mortar and even the ancient lime mortar, to wall or cover formed structures.
Tiles are usually thin, square or rectangular coverings manufactured from hard-wearing material such as ceramic, stone, metal, baked clay, or even glass. They are generally fixed in place in an array to cover roofs, floors, walls, edges, or other objects such as tabletops. Alternatively, tile can sometimes refer to similar units made from lightweight materials such as perlite, wood, and mineral wool, typically used for wall and ceiling applications. In another sense, a tile is a construction tile or similar object, such as rectangular counters used in playing games. The word is derived from the French word tuile, which is, in turn, from the Latin word tegula, meaning a roof tile composed of fired clay.
Building material is material used for construction. Many naturally occurring substances, such as clay, rocks, sand, wood, and even twigs and leaves, have been used to construct buildings. Apart from naturally occurring materials, many man-made products are in use, some more and some less synthetic. The manufacturing of building materials is an established industry in many countries and the use of these materials is typically segmented into specific specialty trades, such as carpentry, insulation, plumbing, and roofing work. They provide the make-up of habitats and structures including homes.
Rammed earth is a technique for constructing foundations, floors, and walls using compacted natural raw materials such as earth, chalk, lime, or gravel. It is an ancient method that has been revived recently as a sustainable building method.
Permeable paving surfaces are made of either a porous material that enables stormwater to flow through it or nonporous blocks spaced so that water can flow between the gaps. Permeable paving can also include a variety of surfacing techniques for roads, parking lots, and pedestrian walkways. Permeable pavement surfaces may be composed of; pervious concrete, porous asphalt, paving stones, or interlocking pavers. Unlike traditional impervious paving materials such as concrete and asphalt, permeable paving systems allow stormwater to percolate and infiltrate through the pavement and into the aggregate layers and/or soil below. In addition to reducing surface runoff, permeable paving systems can trap suspended solids, thereby filtering pollutants from stormwater.
Earthbag construction is an inexpensive building method using mostly local soil to create structures which are both strong and can be quickly built.
Natural building is the construction of buildings using systems and materials that emphasize sustainability. This in turn implies durability and the use of minimally processed, plentiful or renewable resources, as well as those that, while recycled or salvaged, produce healthy living environments and maintain indoor air quality. Natural building tends to rely on human labor, more than technology. As Michael G. Smith observes, it depends on "local ecology, geology and climate; on the character of the particular building site, and on the needs and personalities of the builders and users."
A paver is a paving stone, tile, brick or brick-like piece of concrete commonly used as exterior flooring. They are generally placed on top of a foundation which is made of layers of compacted stone and sand. The pavers are placed in the desired pattern and the space between pavers is then filled with a polymeric sand. No actual adhesive or retaining method is used other than the weight of the paver itself except edging. Pavers can be used to make roads, driveways, patios, walkways and other outdoor platforms.
An earth structure is a building or other structure made largely from soil. Since soil is a widely available material, it has been used in construction since prehistoric times. It may be combined with other materials, compressed and/or baked to add strength.
Architectural terracotta refers to a fired mixture of clay and water that can be used in a non-structural, semi-structural, or structural capacity on the exterior or interior of a building. Terracotta pottery, as earthenware is called when not used for vessels, is an ancient building material that translates from Latin as "baked earth". Some architectural terracotta is actually stronger than stoneware. It can be unglazed, painted, slip glazed, or glazed. A piece of terracotta is composed of a hollow clay web enclosing a void space or cell. The cell can be installed in compression with mortar or hung with metal anchors; such cells are often partially backfilled with mortar.
A compressed earth block (CEB), also known as a pressed earth block or a compressed soil block, is a building material made primarily from an appropriate mix of fairly dry inorganic subsoil, non-expansive clay, sand, and aggregate. Forming compressed earth blocks requires dampening, mechanically pressing at high pressure, and then drying the resulting material. If the blocks are stabilized with a chemical binder such as Portland cement they are called compressed stabilized earth block (CSEB) or stabilized earth block (SEB). Typically, around 3,000 psi (21 MPa) of pressure is applied in compression, and the original material volume is reduced by about half.
The history of construction traces the changes in building tools, methods, techniques and systems used in the field of construction. It explains the evolution of how humans created shelter and other structures that comprises the entire built environment. It covers several fields including structural engineering, civil engineering, city growth and population growth, which are relatives to branches of technology, science, history, and architecture. The fields allow both modern and ancient construction to be analyzed, as well as the structures, building materials, and tools used.
Alternative natural materials are natural materials like rock or adobe that are not as commonly in use as materials such as wood or iron. Alternative natural materials have many practical uses in areas such as sustainable architecture and engineering. The main purpose of using such materials is to minimize the negative effects that our built environment can have on the planet while increasing the efficiency and adaptability of the structures.
Structural clay tile describes a category of burned-clay building materials used to construct roofing, walls, and flooring for structural and non-structural purposes, especially in fireproofing applications. Also called building tile, structural terra cotta, hollow tile, saltillo tile, and clay block, the material is an extruded clay shape with substantial depth that allows it to be laid in the same manner as other clay or concrete masonry. In North America it was chiefly used during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, reaching peak popularity at the turn of the century and declining around the 1950s. Structural clay tile grew in popularity in the end of the nineteenth-century because it could be constructed faster, was lighter, and required simpler flat falsework than earlier brick vaulting construction. Each unit is generally made of clay or terra-cotta with hollow cavities, or cells, inside it. The colors of terracotta transform from gray to orange, red, yellow, and cream tones. This is due to an effect of the firing process which hardens the clay so it can be used for structural purposes. The material is commonly used in floor arches, fireproofing, partition walls, and furring. It continues to be used in Europe to build fire-resistant walls and partitions. In North America the material has largely been replaced by concrete masonry units.
Hydraform International Pty Ltd. is a manufacturer of brick and blockmaking machines. It was founded in Johannesburg, South Africa. The company specialises in brick and blockmaking machines and accessories that enable the development of a stabilised soil cement block or a compressed earth block (CEB). Their products include stabilised soil blockmaking machines, pan mixing machines that are used to create the mixture for the blockmaking mixtures and accessories for these machines. The brick that is created by their machines is an interlocking stabilised soil cement block that is made using a mixture of soil, water and Portland Cement.
Alker is an earth-based stabilized building material produced by the addition of gypsum, lime, and water to earth with the appropriate granulometric structure and with a cohesive property. Unbaked and produced on-site either as adobe blocks or by pouring into mouldings, it has significant economical and ecological advantages. Its physical and mechanical properties are superior to traditional earth construction materials, and are comparable to other stabilized earthen materials. The ratios of the mixture are determined in accordance with the purpose of construction. Alker has primarily been used as a wall construction material; for this purpose, the addition of 8-10% gypsum, 2.5-5% lime, and 20% water to earth produces optimum results. These ratios may change according to the nature and content of clay in the soil.