Natural Building Materials
The stick frame stucture is not the only option available for your modern home. Although not as popular in the mainstream building trades, the alternative built or Natural Built home is often built with natural materials such as strawbales, light-concrete, cob, adobe, rammed earth, used tires (earthships), earthbag and then there is the earth sheltered home. Not only are these designs generally less expensive than using traditional designs and materials, these unique materials also match the strength and durability of many manistream materials. Also in this category we will include different designs of small homes and greenhouses.
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Adobe Brick Construction - Adobe brick structures lasted for centuries in the desert south west. |
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Straw Bales - Construction costs are reduced as strawbales are cheap and easy to build with. Typically a strawbale home is built in a "post & beam" building method, utilizing a wood, steel or concrete framework. The bales are then placed in the walls as insulation. |
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Cob Construction - Cob is a material that is formed using locally available resources using a mixture of clay, sand, straw and water. |
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Rammed Earth Construction - Rammed Earth Walls are constructed from a mixture of earth that has suitable proportions of sand, gravel and clay sometimes with an added stabilizer |
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Light-Weight Concrete |
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Earth Plasters |
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Earth Sheltered Structures - Structures built within the earth have huge mass- because of the dirt's high density, it undergoes slow temperature changes and offers a fairly constant exterior temperature on a wall. |
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Earthbag Construction - Earthbag construction is a very strong and cheap way to build a structure and it starts with filling a sandbag with dirt |
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Earthships - Earthships are earth-sheltered buildings made of tires filled and tamped with earth |
