2/20/2019
By: Steven H. Atherton

Hello everyone. As some of you know, we purchased a compressed earth brick making machine a few years ago. In connection with our completely off-grid greenhouse project, we needed a power house. We decided to seize the opportunity to build our first building using our compressed earth brick making machine and it worked great. Check out the images below to see how it all came together.

The process is pretty labor intensive, but from the standpoint of making use of materials we have on-site (i.e. Dirt and lots of it!!!) and constructing something that maintains a moderate temperature year round and is quite sturdy, it is great. As of my writing this post, the building has been in service for a couple of years without showing any signs of wear or tear.

Without any heating or cooling, the otherwise uninsulated building has kept the temperature approximately 20E cooler in the Summer and 10E warmer in the Winter. That works great for our eight Trojan L16H-AC deep cycle flooded 6 volt batteries, Magnum 4,400 watt / 48 volt inverter, Morningstar 60 amp MPPT charge controller and other electronics.

The building did have its materials cost, however, particularly in terms of concrete. First, the bricks are quite heavy so concrete footers that were 16″ wide and 16″ thick were poured. Second, the formula for producing stabilized earth blocks contained 5 measures of dirt for every measure of Portland Cement. Third, we opted for a 4″ concrete slab floor and finally, the building was stuccoed inside and out using 16 bags of sand/concrete mix.

Most of the bricks we made were by 12″ x 8″ x 4″. When we needed a special size we simply used a saw to cut the brick to size. There was little waste because broken bricks were able to be re-compressed. In the end our 10′ x 10′ x 8′ high building took just under a 1,000 bricks. We finished off the building’s stuccoed walls with two coats of Sherwin Williams Masonry paint on the exterior and two coats of Epoxy paint on the inside to protect against battery acid. We have had no cracking whatsoever and the building shows no signs of wear.

Before we undertake our next project using our compressed earth brick making machine, we hope to attach a sheet metal flue that is the size of our tractor’s bucket so that we can make bricks faster and with fewer people. About 80 a day, with five guys working, was our average yield. We believe we can make many times that amount, with 3 guys working, once we match the intake to our tractor’s bucket size. Stay tuned for updates.