[permaculture-oceania] Re: mud brick

[Dr Bob Rich]

>Last night on the ABC TV Inventers, one of the inventions was a cheap way of stabilising mud brick homes in poor countries, to give the occupants time to get out in the event of an earthquake.
Next - what about flooding which dissolves the mud bricks.

    Earth walls actually do very well in response to earthquakes. In California, many old Spanish buildings have survived while modern steel and concrete structures around them collapse. The best way to increase resistance to earthquakes is described in my building book.
    Flooding and rising damp are serious problems. The only ways of protection are to sit the earth walls on sufficiently high masonry plints, or of stablising the bricks with something like emulsified bitumen. I would not build in earth where floods are as likely as once in 50 years.

:)
Bob
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Dr Bob Rich bobrich at mooramoora.org.au
http://bobswriting.com
http://anxietyanddepression-help.com
http://mudsmith.net
Loving your friends is easy.
Loving strangers is only a little harder.
But you don't graduate until you love your enemies.
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