EARTH BUILDING - 5-bedroom COB LONGHOUSE

From: mbrannan4@bigpond.com

Sent: Monday, June 16, 2014 11:15 AM

To: National Indigenous Times ; Koori Mail

Cc: Prof Jon Altman ; ABC Indigenous ; ABC Open Sean O'Brien ; NIT - Dr Woolombi Waters ; Drew Hutton ; Michael 'Ghillar' Anderson

Subject: Plans for a 5-Bedroom off-grid COB ‘LONGHOUSE’

5-Bedroom off-grid COB ‘LONGHOUSE’

For Aboriginal Homelands and Refugee eco-villages

I’d really like to get this project off the ground, via Nurunderi TAFE at Cherbourg maybe or perhaps in collaboration with the Thathangathay Foundation – will follow up with detailed description and costings for one build, which will include forward projections into ‘economies of scale’ costs utilising local industries, thereby invigorating towns and suburbs  ............maureen

 (I will also be submitting this to ATSILS to help mount a case against the Western Australian government for their unconscionable eviction of the Swan Valley’s Nyungah camp and their vandalism of the many fine rammed earth buildings therein, with a case to restore the community with these earth dwellings.)

Bulldozers flatten last remnants of Swan Valley's Nyungah camp‎

Mar 18, 2014 - Bulldozers flatten last remnants of Swan Valley's Nyungah camp ... Comment ... “Extensive consultation with Aboriginal groups, representatives and the wider community has been undertaken ... and there is overwhelming ...

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http://www.abc.net.au/site-archive/rural/telegraph/content/2011/s3138139.htm

Rammed earth housing for Indigenous communities By Maria Tickle 14/02/2011

When you decide to build a house there are many decisions to make. For a start what materials? Brick? Weatherboard? Steel?
The materials you choose and their availability will have a big impact on how much your home costs. But what if the material was all around you, and free? This is the case with rammed earth construction which uses builds walls out of local soil with a bit of another material, like cement or clay, mixed in. The rammed earth building technique dates back thousands of years. In fact, Spain's famous 900-year-old Alhambra was built using this method. Now this ancient building process has caught the attention of the Department of Housing in Western Australia and they are going to trial it in a remote community.

In this report: Dr Daniela Ciancio, structural engineer, University of Western Australia; Graeme Jones, executive director, Aboriginal Housing, Department of Housing, Western Australia; Justin Crawley, executive officer of the Thathangathay Foundation.

http://www.dhw.wa.gov.au/HousingDocuments/Pathways_issue_01.pdf 

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-14/housing-dept-says-hands-tied-over-derelict-houses/5321548

Housing Dept says hands tied over derelict houses 14 Mar 2014

Related Story: Broome's 'third-world' town facing demolition

The Department of Housing says there is little it can do to repair derelict houses in some Aboriginal communities.

There is confusion over who is responsible for maintaining community houses because of a situation in Broome, where squatters are living in derelict buildings.

The department's director of Aboriginal housing services, Graeme Jones, says staff boarded up the properties and disconnected power and water three years ago but it was at the request of residents.

Mr Jones says when assets belong to a corporation, the department has no legal right to condemn or demolish them, no matter how bad their condition.

"Because the asset is not owned by the department, we don't have a role other than by invitation, to do anything further with an asset," he said.

"So that's what we did, we took that action at the request of the corporation because it's more about health and safety."

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This is the dwelling I designed, mostly for remote regions where there’s clay soil and rocks available. It’s only a matter of getting the architect/builder who designed my own 2-bedroom dwelling (Michael Leo of Bardon, Brisbane) to OK these plans, maybe change them a little bit, and they will pass Australian Building Standards – with flying colours.

Here’s a recent interview related to earth building: (Note – my builder has already submitted the code for testing coursed adobe)

 

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/feed/2884400/podcast.xml

Thursday, 22 December 2011, 10:05:00 AM

On the program today Michael Cathcart examines the possibilities around rammed earth housing and changing the name of an era.

Bush Telegraph 22nd December 2011

On the program today Michael Cathcart examines the possibilities around rammed earth housing.

The rammed earth building technique dates back thousands of years. In fact, Spain's famous 900-year-old Alhambra was built using this method.

Now this ancient building process has caught the attention of the Department of Housing in Western Australia and they are going to trial it in a remote community.

But it is soft, dry an dusty earth on demand in Nyirrpi.

The bikey boys from Nyirrpi, in the Tanami Desert, love riding their bikes so much, they wrote a song about it during a hip hop workshop in their community earlier this year.

The workshop's Monkey Marc, a Melbourne based producer, regularly travels to remote locations for music workshops, he says he knew this song was a winner when it became the most requested at the Nyirrpi community disco.

Busby Marou this year released their self titled debut CD. They perform Biding my Time.

Michael Cathcart speaks with Dr Daniela Ciancio, structural engineer, University of Western Australia; Graeme Jones, executive director, Aboriginal Housing, Department of Housing, Western Australia; Justin Crawley, executive officer of the Thathangathay Foundation; Monkey Marc, a Melbourne based producer.

[My transcript...mb]

Rammed-earth housing

RN:  When you decide to buy a house, there are many decisions to make, for a start, what materials to build in – will you build in brick, or weatherboard or steel?  The materials you chose and their availability will have a big impact on how much your home costs. But what if the basic building material was all around you and was free? Well, this is the case with rammed earth construction (and ANY earth-based building method, such as mud-brick, cob -coursed adobe, superadobe and straw bale…mb)  which builds walls out of local soil with a little bit of other material, like cement or clay , something like that, mixed in. The rammed earth building technique apparently dates back thousands of years – I’m told the famous Alumbra in Spain, 900 years old, was built using rammed earth – it’s a pretty sophisticated building for rammed earth, but there you go. Now this ancient building process has caught the attention of the Department of Housing in WA and they’re going to trial it in a remote community, so joining me now from the Department is Graham Jones, the executive director of Aboriginal Housing.  Also with us is structural engineer Daniela Ciancio– she’s at the university of Western Australia and she’s conducting tests on rammed earth construction. Now Graham, how did your department first get interested in this type of construction?

GJ:  Well, we got an approach from the University of Western Australia and they were interested in doing a research program into rammed earth, and one of the things we like to do in the department every year is run a number of innovative projects.  So that was the first thing – it’s innovative and not something that we’ve done very much at all before, and the second thing was the social benefits that we see flowing from the project are really important to us particularly as we’re look at building in the Kimberley in remote Aboriginal towns and communities.  So it just sort of ticked a few boxes for us.

RN:  Well alright, let’s unpack that in just a tick. Now Daniela, you’re a structural engineer – how did you get interested in all of this?

DC:  Well I don’t really have a background in rammed earth – I’m a concrete person, I teach design of reinforced concrete structures at the University of WA – but rammed earth, nowadays it is stabilised with cement, so we use some cement to improve the performance of the material.  So soil plus water plus cement, they ended up with a mix that is very similar to concrete – this is why I’m investigating this material, it is very similar to something that I know already.

RN:  So what do these buildings look like? I mean rammed earth sound like something a bit dirty but actually they look rather beautiful.

DC:  They are absolutely beautiful – in the south of Perth, in the area of Margaret River which is a winery area, the majority of the wineries are built with rammed earth and this is because aesthetically it is such a pleasant  material, you feel like you’re living in a house made of earth. I think there a lot of misunderstandings around the concept of rammed earth, like the fact that it is a very dusty material or is very erodible, but this is not the case any more ... it is durable, it is tough, it is strong  - this is the modern version of the material.

RN:  Graham, does that sound about right to you?

GJ:  O look, they’re certainly some of the things that we’ll be looking at. I’m really interested in the thermal qualities, amongst a range of other things. We’ve got people on relatively low incomes in some of the areas where we provide housing  and the operational cost of a house and the price of energy just makes it extraordinarily difficult and the extremes of temperature means that heating and cooling is a bit factor. So anything that we can do to actually make a house more comfortable in terms of its living, just, you know, has a great impact on the family that’s living there. So our challenge will be to take into account those things and just really get the right solution…. And it has terrific benefits…

RN:  How far down the track are you with this? Is it still just a good idea or are you actually on the ground doing it? 

GJ:  We’re not on the ground, what we’re doing is a lot of research work with Daniela. But  in 2012 when the dry season comes in April, that’s when we want to get on the ground and actually build the structure and then we’ve got another year when we can follow up with additional research, so that’s the plan.

RN:  Now also with us is Justin Crawley who is the executive officer of …  uh.. hello Justin…you’d better do the pronunciation…

JC:  It’s called the Thathangathay Foundation… (Michael Cathcart tries but can’t pronounce it – close enough… yeh, no I’ve failed miserably and I tried so hard to get this right….)

RN:  So you’re working with the Wadeye people in the Northern Territory, is that right?

JC:  Yeah, we’ve got a foundation that’s community owned from Wadeye and we run a role modelling and leadership program out at North east Victoria. We bring eight boys a year down from the community and they work with us for two years looking at lifestyle improvement and if they complete the two years we look at industry development.

RN:  And how do rammed earth houses fit into all of that?

JC:  Rammed earth is something we’ve been involved in personally for a few years, and we built our own house out of rammed earth and a little cottage which is what the boys live in when they’re down here. And some of the elders who visited about four years ago commented how much they loved living in the earth home and the feel of it and wondered if we could do something for them. So we went down the line of working in rammed earth and we’ve done a lot of stuff with Riverina Rammed Earth and a local contractor, a guy called Tony White, and he’s done some training with the boys and slowly developed our gear that we use and the training for the boys.  They’ve worked full time on one house and we’ve built  a couple of sheds and a lot of retaining walls and small-scale projects. We’re in the process at the moment with Bright? P12 Frist College on its    award building a propagation set-up with a hothouse and a couple of equipment sheds which will be built out of rammed earth by the boys.

RN:  Right, so this is pretty complicated – you’re running the program in Bright, which is in Victoria’s north-east, but the boys who are involved in the program are coming to you from the Wadeye community… 

JC:  That’s right, and after two years, they do a third year, and they’ll end up back at home with some sort of a business entity. A few of the boys are involved in rammed earth, so that’s why we’ve accumulated the gear, and we’ll hopefully this dry season build our first out-station home up at a place called ‘Old Mission’ Wadeye.

RN:  And what are the challenges building a rammed earth house?

JC:  The construction side of it is fairly simple … you’ve got to have the appropriate materials in terms of the soil, you’ve obviously got to build for the environment  you’re in – we’re building up north in a cyclonic area, so you’ve got to make sure your engineering’s right in terms of tie-downs and what nots. The rest is pretty much labour intensive. The best thing about rammed earth is that it has a strong thermal layer so it soaks up heat during the day and releases it at night.  It’s perfect for certain environments and in other environments it may struggle – the main challenge is getting your design right – the process of building is very simple but you have to have the equipment to be able to do it.

RN:  Right … and you use cement do you to stabilise this?

JC:  We use about 8-10% cement – the rest is a soil or soil mix depending on what sort of soil you’ve got on site, and a small amount of water to wet the mix down.

RN:  And how tough does that material end up being?

JC:  Ah, as long as you keep it protected, it’ll last for hundreds and hundreds of years…

RN:  How do you mean ‘protected’? What have you got to do to protect it?

JC:  You’ve got to seal it – you need large eaves to protect it, to keep the sun off and regulate how much heat is getting into it and how much heat is able to escape. Apart from that, you don’t want constant water action on the surface of the earth wall – that will erode it over time. So large eaves …but you can seal it very well  nowadays – there’s plenty of sealers out there that won’t change the appearance of rammed earth but will make it water resistant and dust proof.

RN:  And can you colour it Justin? Or is it always the colour of the earth you build it out of?

JC:  It’s the colour of the earth – some people are very creative with it and will use different coloured soil mixes and put waves through the earth  … you can be extremely creative in how the finished product looks.  So you can change what you’re going to end up with, you can use a variety of soils, you can put features into it, I’ve seen walls where they’ve used lumps of ochre  and things and exploded them in the ramming process and they’ve come up on the surface of the wall.

RN:  Now Daniela, you’ve worked with the Department of Western Australia Housing testing the properties of rammed earth … what have you found?

DC:  Well for example, we found out we can use standard reinforcement in the shape of steel bars to make the walls stronger to be suitable in those cyclonic areas we are talking about. So just about the right amount of reinforcement will provide the adequate strength of the wall. And we are investigating at the moment the thermal properties, as Graham said. We are trying to add some mixture to the mix to make it more insulating. And then we are very interested in the suitability of soils or how to find out if the soil available on site is good or not. Because it’s all a matter of lack of proper standards when you design rammed earth houses – there is not an official Australian code  - so as an engineer you have to be very creative – and this is what doesn’t help to promote the use of this material . What we want to find out are general designing rules that can guide engineers in the designing process.

RN:  We’re talking to (as above) about rammed earth houses and they’re still being experimented with in Western Australia, and  Daniela Ciano, professor of engineering at , and Justin Crawley, of .. er… of the (still can’t pronounce it) … (Graham chuckles..) You laughed at me Justin, I’m doing my best here… and he’s been doing some practical work actually building these house with kids from the Northern Territory. So how many kids are there… I’m assuming there’s no girls involved in this process?

JC:  No its only young men we work with. [Cob, strawbale and superadobe need NO extra equipment and can be built by anyone – even children can help, they love it!] We’ve got 8 at the moment who are more than capable of working in the process – we’ve got two boys who are being contracted out to Riverina Rammed Earth – they do a fly-in fly-out program so they fly down when Riverina Rammed Earth has got a project on, work for them for a period and then fly home in the interim. The guy at Riverina is very happy with their capabilities and their training. The best thing about working with these boys is being able to train two or three of them, and then have them train the other boys, because the transfer of knowledge in their own language is far greater than anything I can achieve. So once we’ve got the first two or three going, then the next level of training happens at a much higher rate. And the boys love it – its very hands-on, very practical, and they get involved.

RN:  Graham Jones from the Dept of Housing, lets go back to you… Daniela was telling us that there aren’t any guidelines or building regulations for rammed earth. Isn’t that a little bit worrying?  We’re building Indigenous housing and yet there aren’t any regulations that specify what makes it safe or adequate. [THERE ARE FOR COB– my builder devised and submitted testing regulations for the Australian Builders Society for me to submit my cob dwelling plans to council]

GJ:  Well I think that’s the sort of thing we want to come up with eventually is to really be able to inform Australian standard, but  I would certainly allay people’s fears – there’s an enormous history of rammed earth housing  in Western Australia, particularly in the south-west, and its interesting that the town that we’re looking at doing the rammed earth in, which is a remote town in the Kimberley, the service station there is actually built of rammed earth – so there’s plenty of evidence around, of some fine structures that are easily standing the test of time so..  and there are some very very competent builders of rammed earth throughout the state, and no doubt throughout Australia, so I don’t have any concerns about that – I’m sure we’re going to come up with an excellent product in the end which is going to be very liveable.

RN:  Daniela, we’re talking about this as though its cost effective …  is that a right assumption?

DC:  Definitely it is, if you think.. especially in remote communities, not only do you have to pay for the cost of the material and the cost of labour  force, but you also have to pay for the transportation of the building material to the site and you have to pay for the accommodation of the labour force. So in general, the cost of a house in remote areas is much higher than the cost of the same house in the metropolitan are.  But when you use the material available on site – that is soil – the cost of the material reduces almost to zero – it is available on site so you have zero transportation cost. And then if you manage to involve people from the community to be part of the construction process, and as Justin says, it’s pretty straight forward - then you can also save the money in relation to accommodation of the skilled labour force.  You can train people on site and it’s a very easy job to learn.  So if you add all these things, it’s easy to understand that definitely there is a cost reduction when using rammed earth in remote areas.

RN:  Justin, how would you estimate what any one of these houses would cost?

JC:  Like any house it depends on the size you want – if you were to build a house and pay a rammed earth contractor to build it, you’ll pay anywhere from $450 per face meter upwards .. which makes it a quite expensive house, but a beautiful one… so I have no doubt that their equipment and skill is worthwhile.  What we’re looking at  is the fact that the rammed earth in remote communities, and particularly the outstations, can be a really good owner/builder model, because the majority of your cost is in labour – the materials are on site, and if you’ve got the equipment, which we’ve managed to mass through our foundation, then the costs are reduced greatly and if you’re building something that’s designed around their needs, and they’re building it themselves and providing the bulk of the labour, then the costs can be brought down dramatically. The outstation building we’re looking at at the moment, which will be a three bedroom home and the majority of the labour provided by the family who are going to build it,  will probably cost around $70,000. It’s a very simple building – it doesn’t have a lot of mod cons and whatnot built into it, but it was designed by the people for the lifestyle they want, and they’re prepared to put in the labour and the time – and in the terms of owner builder, were only looking at building the structure around the walls, we’re not saying they need to learn to build everything – they do the basics and then we contract people in to do the other skilled parts they don’t need to do.

Graham Jones from the Western Australian Department of Housing, Dr Daniela Ciancio who is a structural engineer from the University of Western Australia and Justin Crawly, the executive officer of the Thathangathay  in Victoria (gets it right this time.. sort of.)

 

From: mbrannan4@bigpond.com

Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2012 11:57 AM

To: South Burnett Times - editor

Subject: Fw: Proposed Murgon/Cherbourg Permaculture Farm - Plan for a 5 bedroom cob dwelling

Can I just thank you for being the ONLY media outlet to ever report on my earth building endeavours way back in 2005! I sadly have to report that my demonstration cob kennel/goat shed, that had withstood multiple storms, has been demolished by the new owners of my Nature Reserve .... along with most of the nature unfortunately.

 

Article in the South Burnett Times, 8th February 2005

Environmentalist backs cob building design

By James Brecknell

Murgon shire environmental activist Maureen Brannan’s interest in building cob dwellings has taken on new relevance since the Indian Ocean tsunami struck on Boxing Day.  Ms Brannan compares their usefulness to that of the emergency domes that Californian superadobe company Calearth taught the people of Bam, Iran to build after their earthquake in December 2003.

She said cob-building was so simple to learn that workshops could be conducted over the internet – which is what Calearth did for the people of Bam.

Calearth was currently assisting tsunami victims to build dwellings in Asia. “Because they require only the soil underfoot and a small building kit that fits into the boot of a car, superadobe emergency domes provide safe accommodation for poverty-stricken victims of catastrophes, especially in earthquake-prone districts,” Ms Brannan said. "They are easy to build, can withstand after-shocks and are true life-savers for people who have lost everything.”

She said the method of building walls and domes in cob – found in cultural traditions all over the world – was extremely simple, but technique was the key to fast and easy construction.

“It has been likened to the method of making pottery, albeit giant-sized, and uses mainly materials readily found in the environment - sand, clay and rocks.”

Kennel-sized trial

Ms Brannan’s interest in cob-buildings is not new. She hopes to hold workshops on her privately-owned wildlife reserve in Cloyna following the proven durability of a kennel-sized building she erected on the property nearly eight years ago. Ms Brannan built the kennel as a demonstration for council when submitting plans to build a cob dwelling.

“It’s still standing strong despite not having the roof attached properly, and given a good roof, should be equally intact in 100 years,” Ms Brannan said.  “Cob buildings are virtually indestructible; they don’t even get earthquake-damaged if they are built round, and any cracks that do occur are easily fixed up. They are also flood-proof according to the height of the stone plinth.”

Ms Brannan said cob building was very easy to learn. “We had quite small children helping build in the last workshop, which was hosted by American cobbing expert, Becky Bee.

A cob building can be rendered on the outside with finer clay or even cow dung.  The floor of Ms Brannan’s doghouse is crushed ants nest, which in a dwelling, can be polished to a high shine.  “It later had a heavy wooden door built on to hold animals. Two of our dogs had their puppies in it – even Gytha our goat had her kid in it quite comfortably. They can be built strong enough to house pigs as well."

Ms Brannan said her proposed cob dwelling conformed to Australian Building Authority standards and was fully backed and overseen by one of Australia’s top earth-building engineers, Peter Ytrupp.  Mr Ytrupp was responsible for the Rainbow Serpent mud-brick cultural centre at the base of Uluru.

But in the absence of funding for the workshops, Ms Brannan said she had approached the greens and other groups in the hope of making them possible. Ms Brannan said the internet was a good medium for teaching because it by-passed governments who were unnecessarily obstructive and notoriously held back life-saving innovations.

 

[Pictures of the original building plan and cob kennel with the caption:   Plans for a cob dwelling and Maureen Brannan’s cob kennel has a window that can be seen through the doorway, set into the wall on the other side, as a demonstration of how to insert them.  Ms Brannan said bottles can feature in a light-giving wall and can be incorporated inside the wall itself. ]