Building Our Earthen Home EP 9 Building the Adobe Walls

Building the wall with adobe bricks or sun-dried bricks is so fun and it's very fast. I think it's the fastest way of building that I ever built before. When we have enough bricks and prepare the foundation ready, we start to build. What we use to bind the bricks together is mud. The same ingredient that we make bricks. That is what we use as a mortar to bind the brick together. The mortar or the mud that we use to build, we use to bind the brick together. It's easier to make it thinner than when we make bricks because when we put the bricks on it, it will spread out on the side easily. And when we put the mortar on top of the wall, it's good to make into a mound. Don't smear it. Don't plaster. Don't make it flat because the surface of each brick is not the same. It's not even. If we make a mound of mortar and then push the brick on top of it, the mortar will fill up from inside out. So, there will have no gap inside the wall. So, if we have gap sometimes, the ants like to dig a hole and make a house in that tunnel inside if we have a gap in the middle. So, when we build with adobe bricks, it's good to build the whole house in the same time. Don't build only one wall because each brick has to be interlocked and it's easy to look the whole thing to compare if it's straight or not. After we finish each layers of building bricks, it's good to look the whole thing to compare if it's straight or not. If it's not straight, it's good to use the bricks to hit it to make it even. Don't use anything harder than bricks. It will break the bricks. After we finish the first layer, the next layer, each brick has to be on top of two bricks at the bottom. It has to be interlocked. That will make it strong. There are many ways to build the adobe wall, but the technique that I like the most is just to pour the mortar in a long long wall, just all the way of the wall. The first thing is just go with the mortar first. If we set up a team, one team, one person can pour the mud on the wall like this and then the second person will make it even like make a dike on top of the wall like this. Make it even. We don't need very thick mud in the wall because if it's thick, it's not good because when we put the brick on it, it will push the mud out. We'll waste a lot of mud. And then after that, we just put the bricks on top of the mortar. Don't worry about it's straight or not straight. Just put it like this. You can go very fast with this technique in a few minutes. You can go very far. It's unbelievable fast. And then when you go all the way to the end of the wall, you can look at it to see to check if it's straight or not and then you can adjust it. So this is the way, the technique that I love the most because it's so fast and you can adjust it when you look on the side. When we look to see it's straight or not, look only one side. Don't look both sides because the brick is not even. It's good to check one side only. If one side is even, that's good enough. How to build adobe bricks on top of the lintel or on top of the door frame or the window frame. Normally, we like to put the bricks on top of the door frame or the lintel, at least half of the bricks or one third of the bricks each side. It's good to build both sides at the same time and meet in the center. So when we start to build like this, this will be the technique how to spread the weight to the wall more than let the weight pressing on top of the lintel or the window frame and we can fill the middle later. It's good to start from both sides and meet each other in the middle. When we build above the window, three to four layers at least so the weight will be pressing down on the window frame or the lintel in the shape of pyramids so it's not too heavy. How to cut the bricks to fill up a small gap that's smaller than the brick is good to measure and then hit it on the side of any ankle, hard ankle and don't worry about to make it nice shape because we can fill up with mud easily. So don't try to shape it perfectly. It's not necessary. So if we need to cut smaller than half a brick, it's not easy. It's good to have a mercedes or axe as a tool. It's good to have the old one because when you use this tool to cut the bricks, it will blunt. It's not sharp anymore. So we use mercedes to shape one side of the brick first and then after that we shape another side, turn to another side and cut it off. Don't try to cut one side because it will break the bricks. So the mercedes is quite important tool for us in the building like this and this is the way we cut bricks. Normally it's so easy and have a lot of fun. How to build on top of the T like this. It's important to make it interlock the whole thing. We need to interlock the bricks because it will hold each other, pull each other. It will be very very strong. The T is very important part of the wall so it needs to be interlocked well. There are many ways to build with this technique. The way that we usually do it just to put the bricks interlock at least three of them like this. Even it's interlocked very little but it's so strong. It stays very well. So this brick will be over three bricks and the bottom. It will press each other. This is the way to make the adobe wall so strong than normal wall. When we have to build to touch the frame it's good to use a beautiful side to touch the frame. So it will be easy to look at the straight line on the side of the wall and then don't worry about the gap. Even we cut the bricks even we have the big gap like this it's good because we can fill up easily. The easiest way to fill up is just put a lot of mortar or if we want to make it dry faster we can put rocks or broken bricks or anything hard and dry to fill up that area. And then we can use mud to cover it. When it dries it will connect together. It will bind together very strong. So don't worry about material that we fill up. Whatever it works well. There's another way to build on the T wall to make it interlock. We can interlock one side of the T first like an L shape and the next layer we go on another side. So in this way it works well also. It depends on what do we like it. With this technique we can have half bricks on the end of this side. So it will be easy to cut half bricks to fill up this area. We can build another side of the T to make it even and the next layer we can go overlap another side. So if we keep doing like this it will be very very strong too. Sometimes we have to cut the bricks into any shape that we want to make it fit. Sometimes we don't need to do that. We just fill up with mortar whatever we like to. This is the way we cut it to the corner to make the corner to make it fit. But many times we're lazy to cut. We just fill up with mortar in that area. Don't need to cut it. While we're building it's very important to not check the wall like this. Sometimes we try to press the brick down but it's not important because it will make the whole wall check. It makes it change. So instead of checking we can use the brick to hit it like this. It will move only that bricks but if we check it will check the whole wall. It will make the whole wall move. So that's not safe. Normally we don't worry about the top of the wall straight or not straight because we can level on top. But if you care use mercedes to shape it. Under the side of the wall to check if it's straight or not you can use plumb bob. That will help to check it straight easily. So this is a good tool to try. When the wall is higher than our chest don't keep building because the wall will be always in or out of the center. So it's important to have something to stand on higher to look from the top down to compare. That will help us a lot. And then while we build if we have some holes we need to fill up. It's good to use straw mixed with mud like cob and then fill up that hole. We will do this with the deep hole only but the small hole we don't do that because when we plaster it can fill up easily. So don't waste your time to fill up a small hole. And then the technique how to deliver the bricks is just to throw the bricks up. This technique many people feel scary but if you try it it's very fun. It's very easy. And this is the house after we build the wall. The first floor done. The next step is going to be the second floor. So the next video is going to be how to make the second floor. The floor of the second floor.