raw material for compressed earth block making

“All right, guys,” said my cousin Jerry, “it’s time for a pie run.”

“Yay!” said Eva, clapping her hands. “I love pie!”

Poor girl. She soon found out that Jerry wanted them to pick up the cow patties from our dirt pile, so we wouldn’t have smelly bricks. This was our dirt pile at the beginning of August. It’s much smaller now.

We don’t want cow manure in our bricks, but plaster is another matter. People have been using animal hair and manure to add fiber to plaster for many centuries.

Ew. Sounds yucky. We may try it.

After our first plaster layer on the well house failed, we conducted a plaster experiment. We mixed up different proportions of sand and dirt. Some of the mixtures included chopped hay.

plaster test brick

Photo 1 was our dirt-only mixture, just like we used on the well-house. No surprises there. It cracked and curled away from the brick like the mud plaster on the well-house did.

plaster test brick

Photo 2 is the mortar mix we use to glue the bricks together (3 parts dirt to one part sand). It looks alright.

plaster test brick

Our favorite was Photo 3, two parts sand, one part dirt. It was so smooth and pretty. About the fourth day after we plastered the test bricks, we came to work to find all but one sad little corner of the plaster layer fallen to the floor, having come away from the brick as clean as you please.

plaster test brick

Two parts sand, one part dirt, and one part hay looked good and stuck to the brick, as you see in Photo 4. We went with that for plastering the inside of the well house. We may use it inside the house, too. It won’t hold up to rain. We hope there won’t be any rain falling inside the well house.