This was the northwest corner of our earthen house before we started to work on the chilly Thanksgiving weekend of 2010. Our goal was to build up the walls between window openings on the north side of the house.
The short wall spans between windows were just the right size to make brick-laying fussy and difficult. A word of advice to others who want to build a compressed earth block house: plan the wall segments so you can lay the bricks in whole, instead of having to cut and piece.
We also contended with electrical conduit running through the walls. Eva is sawing a notch in this block, to fit around the conduit. Unfortunately, the sandy blocks wear away the saw’s teeth in a hurry. Sometime later, we switched to a bow saw with replaceable blades.
As the new walls rose, we tried to keep them level with the previous walls. Even when we used the same size bricks, the new walls weren’t always level with the old ones. Van and Kathy discovered a new, efficient way to reduce the height of a brick to level up walls: brush water on it and scrape it with a shovel. Works well for large areas!
It’s amazing how quickly the walls rise when they have big spaces in them. And it’s also amazing how the window openings make the place look so much more like a house.
We had a good weekend’s work. Thank you, Van and Kathy and Eva!
At the end of the day, the sun lit up these hawthorn berries in a little grove close to where we were working. I can hardly wait to live there!
