A Guide to Building Earth Homes
D. Allen Hughes, P.E.
Course Outline
This course covers the following subjects:
1: Introduction - Types of earth houses
2: Soils - And what can be done with them
3: Stabilization of soils
4: Where to build
5: Foundations
6: Lightweight roofs
7: Preparing the soil
8: Making adobe blocks
9: Making pressed earth blocks
10: Making walls with earth blocks
11: Making rammed earth walls
12: Roofs for earth houses
13: Floors
14: Surface coatings
Suggested references Appendix
Appendix A - Atterberg Limits of Soils
Appendix B - Useful Formulas
Common Soil Problems
This course includes a multiple-choice quiz at the end, which is designed to
enhance the understanding of the course materials.
Learning Objective
At the conclusion of this course, the student will have learned or been exposed to the following concepts pertaining to earth home construction:
This course is intended for use by engineers, architects, builders and aid workers.
Benefit to Attendees
Students will gain an historical perspective of an ancient method of home construction that is also still widely used.
Course Introduction
This course is based on the publication, A Handbook for Building Homes of Earth which is used and distributed by the Peace Corps. The techniques and methodologies described in this course document may be useful to improve the efficiency and methods of earth home construction. The significance of the methods of home construction introduced here is that they are some of the oldest known methods of building permanent dwellings and are some of the most cost effective methods of construction.
Course Content
This course is based on the publication by Peace Corps' Information Collection & Exchange (ICE) "A HANDBOOK FOR BUILDING HOMES OF EARTH".
A Guide to Building Earth Homes
Course Summary
This course makes a brief citation of the history of earth homes, summarizes a broad study of current earth home construction methods and introduces recommended best practices for planning and constructing earth homes.
Quiz
Once you finish studying the above course content, you need to take a quiz to obtain the PDH credits.