February saw the continued progress of the rammed earth walls.
It was important to get the strength, colour and texture just right. We worked with Bath University to research strength, and many options were tested before landing on the finished colour and texture.
In order to actually build the rammed earth walls, we needed to find a repeatable solution. After some thinking, we landed on using scaffolding boards to create the formwork.
Site Foreman, Nick, got in contact with a specialist in New Zealand, and together they developed a way of using standard scaffold boards to create this as formwork in layers.
We then needed to work out how best to ram the earth. We tried a pneumatic rammer, but the vibration proved challenging to manage. In the end, a simple hand-tamping method was gentler on the crew. A number of them could take turns, making for a better rhythm and workflow.
The walls are then built in layers that combine the natural layers with the formwork. Within the height of each scaffold board, the rammed earth walls are created by compressing three layers of earth. This slowly and surely builds the wall up to full height.
