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An earthen floor. An earthen floor, also called an adobe floor, is a floor made of dirt, raw earth, or other unworked ground materials. It is usually constructed, in modern times, with a mixture of sand, finely chopped straw and clay, mixed to a thickened consistency and spread with a trowel on a sub-surface such as concrete.
Old adobe minaret in Kharanagh village, Iran Earthen hut with thatched roof in Toteil, near Kassala, Sudan. An earth structure is a building or other structure made largely from soil. Since soil is a widely available material, it has been used in construction since prehistory. It may be combined with other materials, compressed and/or baked to ...
The primitive clay oven, or earthen oven / cob oven, has been used since ancient times by diverse cultures and societies, primarily for, but not exclusive to, baking before the invention of cast-iron stoves, and gas and electric ovens.
If walls are 'raw' earth, an infill plaster of earth with straw is used to fill the nooks between bags or courses. A finish plaster is applied on top. Roof overhangs are helpful to reduce plaster waterproofing requirements, although plaster on lower walls may be stronger and more water-resistant than plaster on upper walls.
Earthen plasters consist of various clay minerals that can influence the properties and performance of the plaster in numerous ways. Those minerals include kaolinite, halloysite, montmorillonite, bentonite, saponite, vermiculite, illite, sepiolite and palygorskite, zeolites (more used as an additive), chlorite and smectite.
A compressed earth block (CEB), also known as a pressed earth block or a compressed soil block, is a building material made primarily from an appropriate mix of fairly dry inorganic subsoil, non-expansive clay, sand, and aggregate. Forming compressed earth blocks requires dampening, mechanically pressing at high pressure, and then drying the ...
Soil is classified in several different ways but generally includes gravel, sand, clay, silt, and peat. Some soil scientists make the distinction that disturbed soil is called dirt because soil science is more complex than just the materials. Building materials are frequently subsoil.
Hexagonal sheets of the clay mineral kaolinite (SEM image, 1,340× magnification). Clay is a very fine-grained geologic material that develops plasticity when wet, but becomes hard, brittle and non–plastic upon drying or firing.