≡× MENU

• Interior
• Window
• Walls
• Projects
• The buildings

Mud wall. DIY plaster. Technology for preparing clay, lime, cement mortars. The benefits of building with adobe include:

This article is about traditional hatah middle zone, a little about the technologies of their construction, about why they are in poor condition today. We continue the series of articles “Good DIY house" In the future, articles such as “Traditional Frames” will be published, in which we will talk about English oak, German half-timbered, Japanese frames. We think in general outline, in the article “World experience of folk construction using clay,” talk about how they built in the world where adobe is known and how it was used.

A little history

Let's look at the period of the last 50-60 years. The Great War ended in 1945 Patriotic War. People were returning to normal life.
There were no villages as such; houses were destroyed and burned. It was necessary to quickly solve the housing problem. They built quickly and from what was underfoot and in sight.
There were several options for houses and technologies inherited from parents: adobe block hut, adobe-cast ( adobe) And hut(there are actually many types of huts). Let me remind you that we are considering the steppe and forest-steppe, where clay is abundant, and scaffolding not much or not at all.
If a hut was built on the site of an old one that had burned down, then the removed clay was sorted into suitable and unsuitable (those containing a lot of wood chips or those that were baked from the fire were considered unsuitable).

Adobe-block hut

First method - adobe blocks. Why the blocks and how did this happen? There are two approaches here. First: old unusable adobe hut with strong walls, for one reason or another, they were sawn into transportable blocks. They sawed with a string saw made of barbed wire with handles. After the material was prepared, laying began on clay solution.
The second option was to make new blocks. Immediately in post-war period it was not very popular, since this method required the availability of a place where you could survive a season or two. During the first construction season, the family worked on making blocks. It was necessary to extract clay (for this purpose, dig a well and a cellar, or extract it from a quarry located near the village). It is worth noting that clay better properties, if it is frozen (perhaps it was stored on the site for the winter). Then the clay was mixed with straw or hay (sometimes wood chips), but more often with chaff (waste from milking grain) and the blocks were formed. They dried, then they were stored for the winter. The blocks were stacked and protected from the rain.
On the territory of Ukraine, until the collapse of the USSR, rural factories producing adobe. Now there are only a few such factories, their products continue to be in demand among villagers.
This technology is characterized by convenient and rapid construction, it was very easy to work at height without serious scaffolding. Walls were quickly erected using clay mortar blocks. But often the villagers forgot to bandage the seams or made the walls too thin, which is why such houses easily fell apart into “cubes” over time. But at the same time, the walls could turn into a monolith, which is very difficult to disassemble or destroy. Perhaps there was a technology for quick masonry, when the blocks dried for a week (set) and went into the walls. (The authors’ assumption)

Adobe-cast (adobe) hut

Another method of construction was adobe. To this day, such huts are highly valued. Their walls are durable and require minimal maintenance. Clay technology requires strong arms, legs and hardy hooves. The clay was soaked and kneaded next to the future house. They dug one or several holes in which there was a clay-sand mixture. Kneading could be carried out with the help of horses, oxen (but the animal is not bad and always strives to get away), using a wheel from a cart or tractor, or a specially made one. Again, the use of the legs of relatives and friends (Toloka) was a common practice.
It must be said that, in fact, there is a nuanced division between adobe and adobe. How do they differ? Claystone is a technology for laying plastic clay into formwork that already contains straw. Claybite- this is a mixture of clay and straw with less water, also placed in formwork. In both cases, the mixture is thoroughly compacted.
Hut was erected on the principle of climbing formwork. This process was quite difficult and lengthy. It was necessary to prepare the mixture, install the formwork, lay the mixture with layer-by-layer compaction, wait for the structural strength to gain, after which the formwork was removed, the scaffolding was installed, and everything happened again. The pouring height at a time is 300-400mm. Up to 20 people, or even more, could work on one house at the same time.
It is difficult to say how quickly the house was built. Construction is both convenient and problematic. It was difficult to serve the mixture to a height higher than human height. With this technology, it was necessary to follow a number of rules for arranging dressings. Let us repeat, houses using this technology are very durable and least susceptible to the influence of time (if everything is done wisely).

Mazanka

Mazanka. There is so much talk about this technology, but few people have thought about what it is. Often, when they want to make an attack on Ukrainian traditional housing, they mention exactly “ mud hut». Mazanka- this is the warmest hut of all the huts that are built from clay. It is the fastest in construction, but no less labor-intensive. In Europe, huts have been known since before the Middle Ages. This technology is used by the British, known as English oak frame with clay and straw filling, by the Germans and French, known as half-timbering, even in Italy and Spain outbuildings are performed using this technology. And about the neighbor and Far East, the author modestly keeps silent about buildings in Africa, India, China, because mud huts are still being built there today. So, hut- this is a wooden frame, usually made of white acacia (in Ukraine), filled with clay.
If in adobe And adobe blocks the foundation was more of an accident, then stones or burnt tree trunks could be placed under the main supports, or they could simply dig in supports. The cross members of the frame were branches of felled acacia; it must be said that they fit into slotted holes in the racks; the frame was without nails. When a large tree was cut down, one trunk with a diameter of 300-400 mm was split into 2 or 4 parts and used as supports at angles. If younger trees were used, then trunks from 100 to 200 mm were used for supports. Then branches were woven into the crossbars to create a kind of “basket.” After all these simple operations, the frame was smeared. A clay-straw mixture was used, the amount of straw ranged from 10 to 70% by weight. It is possible that there were cases when the frame could first be covered, and then the walls were finished, which makes the construction process more convenient, but requires more skilled work on the frame. The advantage of adobe is that it dries much faster than ordinary adobe; it uses less adobe, which makes construction easier. In more northern versions, a log house was made from logs with a diameter of 150-200 mm, and then coated with kaolin clay. This method simultaneously solved the problem of caulking the seams and imparted a traditional white color.

Supplements

In this article, we will not consider in detail the technologies for adding organic binders, stabilizers, and hardeners. Let’s dispel a little the myth about using dung, or rather horse manure. Horse manure was used as shredded fiber to “iron” the walls in the final stages of finishing. To reinforce the clay mixture in the southern regions, the descendants of nomads could use manure instead of straw, since it is still more profitable to give hay and straw to livestock first. And grains were not grown much in these regions. IN adobe mixtures they could add whey, blood, dung - to improve the properties of adobe. They not only increased the strength of adobe, but also increased its moisture resistance and durability.

Error Analysis

We allow ourselves to note that after the war, the Soviet government actively spread unspoken propaganda that the village is hard work, the horror of modern Soviet man, and the city is a bright future and wonderful prospects. This subconscious “zombification” led to an outflow of the smartest and most skilled people to the cities to work in factories. And those who remained were forced into collective farms.
The younger generation in the village needed housing. Therefore, construction from pasture materials was still relevant. We used all the same principles. Only more and more often did we think about the foundations. So how was it made? Basically, as necessary, on a quick fix without thinking about the consequences, without wasting time on quality (there were many reasons for this, not just carelessness). Often such a laid foundation could stand from a year to twenty before they began to build anything on it. To this day you can see the foundations laid back in the 80s; they are both the pride of the owners and the collapse of their hopes, overgrown with bushes and trees. Why was the foundation not given importance, even though it was clear from past experience that it was necessary? Firstly, few people knew what the technology and design of the simplest foundation and the principle of its operation should be, so the technology was developed using the method of popular experience and on the advice of neighbors and godfathers (in every village there was a specialist builder who supervised all construction projects, his traditional invited, but given time he was involved in the construction of cowsheds and other collective farm buildings). Secondly, high-quality Construction Materials. Thirdly, very little time was allocated for the foundation, since it was necessary to run the farm.
It is worth saying that the older generations had an advantage, the sites for houses were more or less carefully selected, and the young people were already building where their parents would give birth. Here we come to problems and errors.

The first mistake and the key to problems with the house is that this is a place for construction with all its characteristics (for more details, see the article “Selecting a site” and “ Good house with your own hands"). It was rarely chosen specifically and according to traditions that were known to our ancestors. This may lead to a problem such as capillary suction of moisture from wet soils. Those houses that were built without a foundation on such soils ceased to exist. Others were luckier. A foundation made of rubble, slag, pile stumps (waste reinforced concrete products) and other available materials solved many problems. In addition, it has already become possible to get a couple of packs of bricks. But there are very few examples when brick was used to lay a plinth. As a rule, they lined the base and the wall (where it was not made horizontal waterproofing). But this is in regions close to brick factories. The problem of the basement getting wet caused a lot of trouble for the residents of such houses. It was previously resolved with annual repairs. But our man is lazy. It was decided to cut down the base of the house and make a concrete plinth. This decision was disastrous primarily for block adobe and clay huts, while the huts have survived to this day (but in very poor condition). Most likely they survived, because the supports were filled with concrete and did not allow them to move apart. Then the concrete base was coated with bitumen. In order to avoid whitewashing and repairing the walls every year, they came up with cement-sand tiles and they lined the facades. The tiles were nailed with 100-150mm nails onto 300-400mm walls. Thereby significantly worsening the thermal resistance of the wall. And cyclic freezing of sections of the wall did not have the most positive effect on the structure of the walls as a whole.
Over time, the walls began to slide off the plinths, the plinths began to turn inside out, and water began to flow in. Tiles peeling off near plinths. Over time, rodents trampled their way into the voids that appeared. They do not sharpen the clay itself, but the cracks formed between the frame and the clay interested them very much, they widened them and made nests in them. Over time, many walls in houses (especially non-residential ones or those where there is no owner's relationship) have turned into a kind of Swiss cheese. Also, cracks were formed due to the use of raw wood. Over the course of 10-20 years, the trunk dried out completely, and a cavity the size of a finger, or even two, formed between the adobe and the support. It’s worse when they used dead wood, usually affected by shashel. For 20 years, all that was left of a full-fledged trunk was dust.
If you look closely at the monuments of folk architecture exhibited in museums under open air, then you can see how large the roof overhang was made by our great-grandfathers. The overhang of the huts built in the 20th century. rarely more than 300mm. Hence the streams of water running along the walls, the need frequent repairs and whitewashing.
So far we have only touched the walls. How were the floors made? The technology was simple. The main beam, the slab, ran along the longitudinal axis of the house. The svolok was considered the abode of the brownie. Purlins rested on this beam, onto which clay was thrown. Where boards were used as purlins, the ceiling now looks like a bubble hanging into the room (partly because the board lay flat). Where unsanded round timber was used, repairs were required because the ceiling had long fallen off along with the bark. Also, the load was taken by eye, because deformations of the ceiling (partly again due to raw wood) were a constant phenomenon. The attic has always been used for drying and storage. Because of this, sometimes a weak overlap in some places could give uneven shrinkage, which could cause waves to appear.
In general, quite often thieves entered not through a window or door, but through a broken hole in the ceiling. But this is in those regions where the entrance to the attic was from the yard, and not from the house.
Wings of a house in the 20th century. asbestos fiber, bitumen, steel slates, less often tiles. In the west and north there are shingles and boards. In other matters, traditional straw and reeds were also used (each region had its own traditional roofs, but for the most part it was thatch). Even today it is possible, by picking many slate roofs, find straw or shingles underneath. I think one could say that the thermal resistance of a house covered with slate is several times less, and therefore in the summer the ceiling dries out and cracks, and in the winter the house cools down faster.
But the problem with reed and thatch roofing, in addition to the fire hazard, is that it needs constant care, and only then will it last a long time.

So, work on the mistakes

1. House made of adobe needs a good strip foundation (a foundation that can even be a clay pillow). Not overly powerful, just well made. You can use both traditional rubble masonry and embankments in trenches, and modern reinforced concrete tapes.
2.Adobe must be protected from capillary suction of moisture by a base and a steep blind area (can also be made of gravel with water drainage).
3. The walls must have a thickness of at least 500, and preferably 800 mm, or have a special design (a combination of different adobes according to their saturation with plant fillers). Upon completion of the walls, it is necessary to tie the walls with any type of belts (wooden or monolithic, but do not overdo it with weight). The walls themselves must be bandaged in their design, even a monolith.
4. The attic must be insulated. Warm attic- a guarantee of warmth in the home.
5. The roof overhang to the floor height must be at least 600-800mm. Proper collection and drainage of water must be organized.
6. The house needs care and attention. Adobe house Only then will it serve as well as possible if you take care of it and look after it.

It is these conclusions that will help make your home durable and reliable. I would like to add that you can meet clay walls standing without a roof for more than 10 years. They still support the structural load. Ordinary red brick needs to be removed after the third winter, although this is not particularly difficult - it crumbles.
Those huts that we see today have stood for more than 20-80 years without any owner's attention to them. Despite all the mistakes made and their modest, dilapidated appearance, they stand and perform their function remarkably well. Not a single house can boast that “it was built just right” and it stood for so long, well, except for large-panel ones.

Conclusion

We do not advocate living in an old housing model that does not meet modern requirements comfort and lifestyle. We try to pay attention to technology and mistakes made, in order to use the centuries-tested experience of our ancestors to build modern, comfortable, affordable housing. If you take into account and avoid all the listed mistakes, you can get a high-quality, warm, environmentally friendly, humane, durable house, which you won’t be ashamed to leave to your great-great-grandchildren.

Where you live. And it’s not just about what household chemicals you use, what products you buy or whether you sort your waste. And actually about the construction of your house. If you are the happy owner of a plot of land and a small start-up capital, you can build truly ecological housing, using ancient and traditional technologies for Ukraine, which will be in no way inferior modern projects. We are talking about an adobe house.

First of all, let us explain what adobe is - it is a building material. wall material in the form of unfired bricks made from a mixture of clay, sand and straw (sometimes other ingredients). If speak about construction characteristics, then the compression limit of adobe brick (in dried form) ranges from 10 to 50 kgf/cm2 and is similar in strength to aerated and foam concrete grade 600 (tensile strength 25-40 kgf/cm2).

Although this technology is considered more indigenous to Asian countries, South America and the Caucasus, it is also quite common in Central, Eastern and Southern Ukraine. Ukrainian traditional mud huts were built from adobe. Houses and auxiliary structures are still being built from adobe. Some of them have been preserved in in excellent shape not only in museums, but are also still used in villages. And the grandchildren of those who built them live in them.

The advantages of building with adobe are:

• The cost is significantly lower than buildings made of ordinary brick. Adobe brick can be easily made with my own hands.
• In terms of durability and strength, adobe structures are equal to traditional buildings.
• Adobe has low thermal conductivity, so it is easier to maintain comfortable temperature both in summer and winter.
• Due to its porosity, adobe provides a normal level of humidity.
• Saman is a fire-resistant material. Even after a fire, the walls, as a rule, remain almost undamaged.

The disadvantages include the fact that adobe absorbs moisture very well, so during construction, great attention must be paid to waterproofing both the foundation and walls.

Another benefit of building this way is that you are less constrained by shape than with traditional construction. Your home can have both classic outlines and unusual shapes- round walls, a domed roof, a recess into a hill - with clay you can practically limit your imagination.

It is clear that it is impossible to outline all the nuances of building a house from adobe in this article. In the end, when building any house you will still need expert advice, so we will focus on how to do it adobe brick with our own hands and note only some of the main stages of this type of “green” construction.

In order to make a brick from adobe, first of all, we need clay (oily or medium fat content), sand (coarse-grained, not sea), water, plant residues (the most common option is chopped straw 6-10 cm long) . You can also add expanded clay, cement and sawdust to the clay. If desired, you can add various aseptic additives to the mixture. For fire safety can be added flame retardant additives.

If you use clay that is too oily for the production of adobe blocks, they will crack, and if it is not oily enough, the mixture will not adhere well, crumble, and the strength of the block will suffer. To determine the fat content of clay, you should consult with specialists. But there are also traditional methods its definitions. Here are examples of the two simplest ones:

How to test clay for fat content

Method 1

From the selected clay we form a ball the size of egg. We place it between two planed boards (plywood) and squeeze the ball, pressing it with the top board:

a ball of low-fat clay will immediately fall apart;

a ball of medium-fat clay will fall apart when the distance between the boards is reduced by about a third;

a ball of oily clay cracks when the distance between the boards reaches halfway.

Method 2

Dilute a small amount of clay with water to the consistency of sour cream. Take a dry and smooth wooden stick. Stir the clay solution with a stick. Based on the amount of clay that sticks to the stick, its fat content is determined:

Oily clay - 3 mm or more;

Average clay - 1-3 mm;

Let's get to work. We dig out the pit and cover its bottom with film. We lay a layer of clay 10-30 cm thick on this bedding, fill it with water and leave it overnight. The next day, add sand, knead, and then add pre-moistened filler. Leave the mixture for 2 days, add more liquid if necessary. You can mix the ingredients with a shovel or stick, and knead comfortably with your feet.

We make a mold and make a brick. The mold can hold any number of brick slots at once, but keep in mind that you will need to lift it and turn it over along with the folded brick. Therefore, usually for one person they make a form with 2 cells, for two - with 4-6.

Pre-moisten the mold with water and sprinkle with chopped straw or sawdust. Bricks can be made in almost any desired size and shape, but a typical parallelepiped shape is the size shown below. The mold for making bricks must allow for drying shrinkage of approximately 8%.

Brick dimensions, cm Mold dimensions taking into account shrinkage

40x19x13 43x20, 5x14

36x17x13 39x18, 5x14

30x14x10 32.5 x15x11

The bricks are dried in the open air for 2-3 days, then the brick is placed on the edge and dried for about another week. Then the adobe blocks are stored, for example, in a barn (it is important to protect them from moisture) and kept for about another week or until construction begins.

Work should begin in the spring, then you have a chance to not only make a brick, but also build a house during the season. In 1 day of work, 3-4 people will be able to make 150-200 bricks.

How to check the quality of adobe bricks

If the adobe brick was made correctly, then:

• a nail that is driven tightly into the brick, but holds tightly;
• brick does not soak in water for 1-2 days;
• the brick remains intact when dropped from a height of up to 2 meters.

Now that you have required amount bricks for your house, you can begin its construction. As we noted, a house made of adobe can be built according to a variety of projects, and therefore we will not dwell in detail on the construction process itself, we will only note some of the nuances of constructing structures from adobe brick:

Foundation adobe building must be very well waterproofed.

It is worth placing visors over the windows to prevent drooling. rainwater. Window sills are also waterproofed and protected by tides. The entrance thresholds of the house are also carefully waterproofed.

The corners and joints of the walls are reinforced with reinforcing mesh.

Beams and floors are arranged with load redistribution over the entire wall to avoid point loads.

External walls can be plastered and whitewashed ( traditional version) or overlay in red or sand-lime brick, ceramic or cement tiles. Taxation should begin after the house shrinks. Preferably six months to a year after the construction of the house.

Until the 50s of the last century in the northern and northwestern parts of Ukraine, as well as in some steppe regions southern Russia traditionally built houses, which were popularly called and continue to be called mud huts(from the word smear - to plaster with clay mortar).

A little technology for making smeared walls

Now there are people who want to build ecological homes with their own hands. Therefore, enthusiasts are reviving such old-fashioned technologies, guided by the principle - “everything is new, it’s well forgotten old.”

Let's look at some features old technology making smeared walls.

The walls of the mud huts, like the walls of a half-timbered house, consist of a wooden frame. The gap between the posts and crossbars, which used to be called cages, was filled in the following way: they installed wooden stakes and poles, braided them with brushwood, straw or reeds, and then coated them with clay.

Depending on the type of cell sealing, smeared walls can be divided into:

• wooden;
• wattle;
• straw;
• reed.

Wooden huts consist of frames (crossbars) and racks, the spaces between which are filled with thin logs (knurling), wooden plates or blocks. The surface of such a wall was first filled with wooden shingles from thin poles, and then coated with clay mortar.

Wicker mud hut. With this design, the cells of the supporting frame are filled with vertical wooden stakes and horizontal poles (the pitch of the stakes and poles relative to each other was taken to be approximately 17...25 cm depending on their thickness). After installation, these elements were braided with brushwood and plastered with clay mortar.

Straw hut differs from wattle only in that instead of brushwood, strands of long and straight rye straw were used. The pitch of the stakes from each other was about 17...18 cm.

Reed mud hut. When constructing walls in this way, bundles of winter reeds, previously cleared of husks, were attached with wire to poles installed in cages. The beams were nailed to the upper and lower horizontal elements of the half-timbered frame (trimming).

The walls were coated as follows. Surfaces of external and interior walls were previously cleaned and moistened with a wet brush, and the first layer of solution was thrown onto it, which was then left to dry. Next, subsequent layers were added until it was possible to smooth out and level all the depressions on the surface of the walls.

By doing plastering works, before performing the subsequent plaster layer, pieces of crushed brick were stuffed into the fresh and still soft coating, as far as possible.

After plastering and final drying of the entire plaster marking, the walls were whitewashed with lime, chalk or white clay.

The walls of cold auxiliary buildings were erected in a similar way. The ends of horizontal poles wrapped in straw, pre-impregnated with a liquid clay solution, were installed in the vertical side grooves of the posts. Adjacent rows of poles were fastened to each other with knitting needles, punching through the straw, or the rows of poles were intertwined with thin wire.

The surface of such walls was leveled by throwing a plaster mixture of clay, lime and sand.

It would be interesting to hear your thoughts about mud houses...

The usual Ukrainian hut, a mud hut, belongs to this capital group.

The technology of building houses from clay was known more than six thousand years ago. Mazanka, due to practicality, availability and low cost of materials, as well as speed of construction, was built everywhere. The main materials from which these clay dwellings were made over the centuries were brushwood, straw, reeds, wood, clay and other available materials, which can be found in abundance in Ukraine and southern Russia.

Among the huts there are distinguished: adobe-block hut, adobe-cast (adobe) and the hut itself. All these types of housing were used in the steppe and forest-steppe, where clay is abundant and there is almost no timber.

If a hut was built on the site of an old one that had burned down, then the removed clay was sorted into suitable and unsuitable (those containing a lot of wood chips or those that were baked from the fire were considered unsuitable).

Adobe-block hut. It was made in two ways. In the first case, adobe blocks were used, into which an old unusable adobe hut with strong walls was sawed for one reason or another and sawed into transportable blocks. They sawed with a string saw made of barbed wire with handles. After the material was prepared, laying began with clay mortar.

In the second case, new blocks were made, but in this case it took a year to prepare the adobe blocks. During the first construction season, the family worked on making blocks: extracting clay (to do this, dig a well and a cellar, or extract it from a quarry located near the village). The best construction qualities the clay was obtained by freezing, so it was stored on the site for the winter. Then the clay was mixed with straw or hay (sometimes wood chips), but more often with chaff (waste from milking grain) and the blocks were formed. The blocks that dried over the summer were stored in a stack for the winter, protected from snow and rain.

Whey, blood, and dung could be added to adobe mixtures to improve the properties of adobe. They not only increased the strength of adobe, but also increased its moisture resistance and durability.

On the territory of Ukraine, until the collapse of the USSR, rural factories producing adobe operated. Now there are only a few such factories, their products continue to be in demand among villagers.

This technology is characterized by convenient and fast construction; it was very easy to work at heights without serious scaffolding. Walls were quickly erected using clay mortar blocks. But often the villagers forgot to bandage the seams or made the walls too thin, which is why such houses eventually fell apart into “cubes”. But at the same time, the walls could turn into a monolith, which is very difficult to disassemble or destroy.

Adobe-cast (adobe) hut. The walls of such a hut are more durable and require much maintenance. The clay was soaked and kneaded next to the future home. One or more holes were dug in which the clay-sand mixture was mixed. Mixing could be carried out with the help of animals (horses, oxen) and special devices(cart wheels). The technology was divided into adobe and adobe.

Claystone is a technology for laying plastic clay into formwork that already contains straw. Claybite- This is a mixture of clay and straw with less water, also placed in formwork. In both cases, the mixture is thoroughly compacted.

The hut was built according to the principle of climbing formwork. This process was quite difficult and lengthy. It was necessary to prepare the mixture, install the formwork, lay the mixture with layer-by-layer compaction, wait for the structural strength to gain, after which the formwork was removed, the scaffolding was installed and everything was repeated all over again. The pouring height at one time is 300-400 mm. Up to 20 people, or even more, could work on one house at the same time.

The difficulty of manufacturing was the compaction of the mixture above human height. With this technology, it was necessary to strictly follow a number of rules for arranging a complex ligation of a thin frame made of poles and reeds.

Mazanka. Muzanka is the warmest clay housing, the fastest to build, but no less labor-intensive. Burnt driftwood and large stones were used as the foundation. The cross members of the frame were branches of felled acacia. The frame was made without nails, I must say, all connections were made using mortises and notches. When a large tree was cut down, one trunk with a diameter of 300-400 mm was split into 2 or 4 parts and used as supports at angles. If younger trees were used, then trunks with a diameter of 100 to 200 mm were used to support the frame. Then branches were woven into the crossbars to create a kind of “basket.” After this, the frame was coated. A clay-straw mixture was used, the amount of straw ranged from 10 to 70% by weight.

The advantage of the hut was that it could be made in one season, because It dried much faster than ordinary adobe. In the manufacture of mud huts, adobe was also used, but much less.

In the northern variants, mud hut was carried out on a log house with 3-4 crowns, which was coated with kaolin clay. This method simultaneously solved the problem of caulking the seams and imparted a traditional white color.

Hut huts are still being built according to traditional technology using modern hardening solutions and a wide range of wood.

As a rule, it is performed under mud strip foundation. Then they begin to build the supporting frame. Wooden frame, on the basis of which the hut wall is built, is usually made of pine or oak wood. The walls of the house, except traditional method on plows (frame), usually made on the basis of specially made adobe blocks or made of mud brick.

The main beam, the slab, ran along the longitudinal axis of the house. The svolok was considered the abode of the brownie. Purlins rested on this beam, onto which clay was thrown. Where boards were used as purlins, the ceiling now looks like a bubble hanging into the room (partly because the board lay flat). Where unsanded round timber was used, repairs were required because the ceiling had long fallen off along with the bark. Also, the load was taken by eye, because deformations of the ceiling (partly again due to raw wood) were a constant phenomenon. The attic has always been used for drying and storage. Because of this, sometimes a weak overlap in some places could give uneven shrinkage, which could cause waves to appear.

Everyone who wants to leave civilization first of all thinks about where he will live, sleep, escape from bad weather, and people, as a rule, fearing that they will not be able to build a log house in a season and prepare for winter, since this can be problematic, choose as an option for living in a hastily made dugout or hut, but all this temporary housing is not entirely suitable for life, but rather as extreme survival, depending of course on how to build it - but still.

For example, you can consider a compromise option that can be built by people with modest physical capabilities and even women, since there are no heavy, unliftable logs and there is no need to dig a hole for it, like for example for a dugout. This house is a frame with walls sewn from small diameter logs, and the roof, ceiling and floor are made in the same way.
> >

Read more about the design of such a house and how to build it

After the place is marked, planned, and cleaned, according to pre-designated marks, you need to dig in the posts according to the markings. If the house is small, then four columns will be enough, but if more, then it is better to add another column to each wall for reinforcement. After the pillars have dug evenly into the ground, you can begin tying the longitudinal and transverse crossbars; on the floor and ceiling, logs under the logs should be passed more often, a step of about 60 cm, and the walls will be strengthened when you sew logs on them one by one, the logs need to be closer to each other, so that there are no large cracks left, you need to adjust them with an ax, cutting off the excess.

Next, when the entire frame and walls of the house, including the attic and roof, have been assembled, we begin to insulate the walls. Using wire or rope, we tie rods crosswise to the walls in several layers 20-30 cm thick, we need them as reinforcement so that the clay does not fall off the walls because the clay layer is very thick.

Then a prepared solution based on clay and sand or loam or the soil that is contained under the top fertile layer earth, apply a protective insulating layer to the walls and then insulate the ceiling with the same thick layer, about 15-20 cm. Before filling the ceiling with soil, you need to lay something for additional sealing, for example film or roofing felt, but if not, then you can straw and grass. Afterwards, when the house is almost ready, all that remains is to fill in the rubble for additional insulation.

And so, after the main work, we are left with the most difficult thing to manufacture, this is the door and window. If there are no special tools or ready-made boards, then you can assemble the door jamb and the door using an axe, the work is of course painstaking, but you need to fit everything as tightly as possible so that the heat does not escape, and then cover the door with something - for example, fabric, or unnecessary clothing.

With the window, everything is exactly the same as with the door, we drive everything with a hatchet, you need to install at least double glass, but if there is none, then you can use film, but it needs to be put into three or four threads, with at least a centimeter distance between each other, to create several layers of “air cushion”. The tree for such a house can also be used freshly cut, without preliminary drying, since it is of small diameter and therefore will dry quickly, and it will not move, since you have already secured it, and it will not go anywhere. The diameter is not necessarily too thick; tree trunks with a diameter of 10-15 cm are suitable for logs.

It is better to tie and fasten the entire structure not with nails, but with wire, or you can use ropes. You can dig soil suitable for the solution for applying to the walls on site or right inside the house, at the same time the subfloor will be deeper, and then when laying the floor you will make a hatch and you will climb through it into the subfloor and store your supplies there.

You can even use it as a primer simple land, but clay-containing soil is better. Of course, such walls will constantly crack, and they will need to be greased every year, but it will be warm and dry. Such frame house, coated with a thick layer of clay, is suitable for the first time, while the main, more comfortable housing is being built, and then the mud hut can be used as a barn, warehouse, dig a cellar there, or simply be used as a warehouse.

With a log house, everything is much more complicated, you need logs two or three times thicker, and each log needs to be carefully processed and adjusted; doing it alone is a very difficult undertaking, no matter how you look at it, and you may not be able to finish it in a season if you don’t have construction experience. log houses and knowledge. As an option, of course, you can small house cutting down about 3/4 m is possible for one person, but it will be a bit cramped for long-term, long-term living, although this will probably happen.

Reinforcement of walls with wooden rods and poles

Reinforcement allows the thick layer of clay soil to stay firmly on the walls and not fall out. For reinforcement, the first layer of poles is nailed or tied to the walls with wire, and subsequent layers of poles are tied to the previous ones.

The thickness of the reinforcement layer depends on the expected thickness of the walls, and the thickness of the walls should be made depending on the climate of the region where the house will be built, it can be 10 cm. and 40cm. Also, to insulate such walls, instead of reinforcement and coating, you can use adobe blocks.

Adobe or soil blocks are made in molds, grass is added to the solution to strengthen the blocks for reinforcement, this makes the soil blocks stronger. The blocks are laid as brickwork, that is, the house is simply covered with blocks.

The roof frame must be quite strong to support the roof itself along with the roof and snow load V winter time year, especially in those regions where there is a lot of rainfall. You can cover the roof with both roofing felt and soft roof, and tin, or just straw, in general, whatever is available.
>
>

Production of soil blocks, clay, adobe

Adobe, or soil blocks, are made quite simply and quickly. Clay or clay-containing soil is mixed directly in the hole where the soil is located. It is more convenient to stir the soil by laying down a film or tarpaulin; you can stir it in a trough, basin, or sheet of tin.

Water is added to the clay, and everything is thoroughly mixed and pounded with feet, then straw, or hay, or grass is added to it, even twigs of bushes can be used, in general, anything that is suitable for reinforcing the block.

Then everything is thoroughly mixed again and placed in wooden molds, the solution is compacted and left to dry. When the clay dries and sets, the blocks can be removed from the molds and laid out for further drying.

It takes 10-15 days to dry, periodically turning the blocks over for uniform drying, that is, a couple of days on one side, a couple on the next, and so on until completely dry. When the blocks are dry, you can begin to lay walls from them. Blocks are laid with bandaging, that is, so that the vertical joints of the blocks do not coincide with each other between the rows, so that the upper block covers the junction of the lower blocks.

After masonry, the walls are plastered and whitewashed with whitewash (slaked lime), lime protects from moisture and precipitation, and gives an aesthetic appearance. Adobe blocks They hold heat well, they don’t like humidity and dampness, because of this they lose their strength and collapse (crumple). Such mud huts must be lubricated again every year, all cracks and places where plaster and clay have fallen out must be plastered. The walls are plastered with ordinary clay with the addition of sand.
> >