Talk:Rammed earth

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External links

The administrators seem to have an issue with what is linked to externally, arbitrarily allowing some links that appear commercial and not allowing others that are not. As the person who started this page and the only ongoing maintainer I suggest that to keep them happy we have no external links at all, no matter how useful they may be to people investigating the topic...sigh... Xxxmicrobexxx (talk) 11:10, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Categories?

I'm wondering whether there should be a category called "sustainable technology" - but perhaps it would overlap too much with categories like Category:Appropriate technology & Category:Renewable energy. For the moment, I'll just use Category:Appropriate technology (which is a subcategory of Category:Development and Category:Sustainability).

In the cases of Rammed earth, Adobe & Dutch brick, I think they reasonably belong in Category:Appropriate technology. At the moment, though, the Appropriate technology aspect of these technologies is not developed in the articles. Anyway, feel free to make a different edit or suggestion.

btw, Mudbrick needs either a lot of work, or to be merged with the Adobe article.

(I posted this comment also on Talk:Adobe) --Singkong2005 03:04, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I know what you mean. A friend of mine visited a rammed earth build in Scotland where the cold and rain had turned most of the site into a muddy quagmire. Given the (normally) high cost of labour in the UK, you could argue that it is most inappropriate technology here, but it still has the sustainability advantages.

Categorisation can get quite tricky in the fine details. You really need to find a group of like-minded editors to help sort out the best categorisation structure and then place articles appropriately. A good approach can be to setup a Wikipedia:WikiProject on Green Building or the like, to help coordinate activity. Another thing to consider is that articles and list-type articles can also be a useful way of organising related articles and also have the advantage that subtleties can be explained along the way. For example, we don't appear to have an article on sustainable technology, which might be a good start. -- Solipsist 07:53, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Maybe the varying things I've read about lifespan of these materials reflects the different environments they were in.

I've started the sustainable technology article. --Singkong2005 03:08, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Green building section merger proposal

User:Lean greener has made significant contributions to the Rammed Earth Construction section of the Green building article. I suggest that that content would be better located here, with a paragraph left behind in the Green building article. Is there any agreement?

User:xxxMicrobexxx I started this article - ironically exactly 3 years ago to the day, March 8th 2004. It seems that the item at Green Building is pretty much a duplication of what is here with a few other pieces of information. Obviously it is preferable to have all the info in one place. Go for it.

With the support of User:xxxMicrobexxx above, User:Greener72 on the Green building talk page and User:Lean greener on his talk page, I have merged the Rammed earth section from Green building into this article.--Jrsnbarn 15:29, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Old buildings

I'd like examples of old buildings (with pics) still standing with discussion of how they aged. Has this been used for some interesting old palace or mosque or something like that? --84.20.17.84 08:18, 21 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm...

The current introduction says:

Rammed earth construction, also known as pisé de terre or simply pisé, is an age-old building method that has seen a revival in recent years as people seek low-impact building materials and natural building methods.

Isn't rammed earth construction, by definition, high-impact? :-D --Sneftel (talk) 16:04, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good point, that is jarring, and a bit funny. To keep an encyclopedic tone in the intro, some other phrase, like "more environmentally correct" (although I don't like that phrase either) should be substituted. doncram (talk) 20:52, 24 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree that this is a good point. Words have different meanings according to their contexts. That's why we know that "shaving off a few points" doesn't refer to literally using a razor, and this issue is still much less likely to cause confusion. The term low-impact here clearly refers to rammed earth's low impact on the environment as a green technology. Its use in this context obviously has nothing to do with how it is formed, even though the latter involves compressing or compacting earth, especially since neither of these processes relates directly to "impact", and only one of them even has a Latin root in common with this word. So "impact" and "compact" are cousins, but are far from synonymous, since compacting is roughly synonymous with compression, but "impact" is not. I see no reason to assume that anyone would confuse these usages here. Edits-to-improve (talk) 20:57, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Bias

This article extols the virtues of rammed earth without discussing its drawbacks or unsuitable uses to anything like the same extent. 128.232.228.174 (talk) 18:25, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I assume you know the concept of a wiki... Xxxmicrobexxx (talk) 23:09, 1 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To me this is a very biased article. In addition many biased claims lack citations too. I am adding the NPOV template to this article. --Stinkypie (talk) 08:03, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Stinkypie: Please refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NPOVD which says that 'The editor who adds the tag must address the issues on the talk page, pointing to specific issues that are actionable within the content policies' Please state which claims are biased or lack citation and for what reasons. If you fail to justify your claim, please remove the tag. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.91.167.196 (talk) 15:54, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If no justification for claims of bias are made by end of February 2009 I will be removing NPOV templates Xxxmicrobexxx (talk) 06:50, 14 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

xxxmicrobrew, you're late! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 15.203.233.80 (talk) 15:27, 13 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You're right. But done now Xxxmicrobexxx (talk) 10:18, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is quite an engrossing article, I was totally absorbed by the descriptions of rammed earth construction's strength, cheapness and environmentally friendly advantages. However I also say the article is fairly biased too. Particularly, sometimes the article seems to be stating rammed earth with cement combinations are inferior, and also says rammed earth is looked down upon compared to more 'modern' materials.

Stylistic issues

The Green section has much information that is useful in an encyclopedic context, but does not present it in an encyclopedic style. Additionally, parts of the article delve into too much howto-level detail. I don't necessarily think that any information should be deleted; reorganizing and rewriting to maintain NPOV and encyclopedic style should be enough. 75.140.243.0 (talk) 08:24, 14 November 2008 (UTC) As well, it is very convoluted and repeats itself frequently, hard to read or make sense of.[reply]

some material removed

I removed a bit of material that is not really encyclopedic to this article.

The walls require non toxic treatments and have no risk of off-gassing toxic fumes, making it ideal for chemically sensitive dwellers.^[1]

In the UK it has been suggested that a compression strength of 2N/mm² (290 pounds per square inch) should be assumed in the absence of data derived from testing of the earth that will be used.^[2] Concrete typically used in UK construction is mixed off site and has a compression strength of 12-16N/mm² (1700–2300 pounds per square inch, from a cube strength fcu = 30N/mm² to 40N/mm²), around seven times stronger than rammed earth. However, there are many factors that affect the width of a wall, so a plain concrete wall will not necessarily be much thinner than an equivalent in rammed earth.

it might have a place in another one. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 06:10, 14 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Merge taipa with rammed earth

Taipa (building material) is simply the Portuguese name for rammed earth and that article should be merged with this one. Notice the Portuguese interwiki link here at rammed earth is Taipa (material). — AjaxSmack 23:28, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

[five-1] www.ecoact.org

[2] Walker, Keable, Martin, Maniatidis (2005) - 'Rammed earth: design and construction guidelines'

[1]

[2]