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The Rammed Earth House
by David Easton and Cynthia Wright

      The Rammed Earth House is an eye-opening example of how the most dramatic innovations in home design and construction frequently have their origins in the distant past. By rediscovering the most ancient of all building materials--earth--forward thinking home builders can now create structures that set new standards for beauty , durability, and efficient use of natural resources.

      Humans have been using earth as a primary building material for more than ten thousand years. Rammed earth, as practiced today, involves tamping a mixture of earth, water, and a little cement into wooden forms to create thick, sturdy masonry walls.

      Rammed earth combines pleasing aesthetics and intense practicality with a powerful sense of place. Rammed earth homes are built entirely on-site, using basic elements--earth, water, and a little cement. The solid masonry walls permit design flexibility while providing year-round comfort and minimal use of energy. The builder and resident of a rammed earth house will experience the deep satisfaction of creating permanence in a world dominated by the disposable.

      Earthbuilt homes offer their inhabitants a powerful sense of security and well-being and have a permanence and solidity altogether lacking in so many of today's modular, pre-fab houses. David Easton is the founder, along with Cynthia Wright, of Rammed Earth Works (REW Associates), a company that over the past twenty years has designed and built more than one hundred rammed earth structures for residential and commercial clients around the world.

      Note: David Easton invented Terra Tiles, using a soil-cement mixture which is troweled about an inch thick on the floor and cut apart into separate tiles. I read his article in an old issue of Fine Homebuilding magazine and learned to make our own terra tiles. Along the way we added a few techniques of our own to the process. Easton barely covers the topic in his book The Rammed Earth House, so be sure to check out my book Living Homes: Stone Masonry, Log, and Strawbale Construction for more indepth coverage of this unique flooring method.

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Buildings of Earth and Straw
Structural Design for Rammed Earth and Straw-Bale Architecture
by Bruce King, P.E.

      There are many other excellent books on strawbale and rammed earth construction to help guide the novice builder down the path to building the house of their dreams. Buildings of Earth and Straw is intended more as a companion to the other guides, rather than a competitor. Author Bruce King has tackled the engineering side of working with earth and straw building materials to create a common language for builders, architects, and building inspectors. With this book as your guide, you can build a strawbale or rammed earth house in a way that is truly structurally sound and you can provide the building inspector with the engineering data to back it up.

      Although parts of the book will require an engineering background to understand it, most of the content is accessable to the lay person, and King makes even the mundane engineering interesting, and at times, humorous. This book is truly essential for anyone building a strawbale or rammed earth house in places where building codes are enforced. In places where building codes do not exist, this book is still highly recommended, to insure that you build a safe and stable structure.