I'd rather build my house with my own earth than go into debt [video] | Hacker News Reader

I'd rather build my house with my own earth than go into debt [video]

youtube.com

48 pointsImPleadThe5th87 comments

I did not watch the whole video, but...

The video talks about "no cost at all", except it ignores the massive amount of labour and time required to hand make bricks from mud and go from there.

Later on the video talks about ancient structures (pyramids, great wall, etc) that withstood the test of time, ignoring the MASSIVE human cost associated with building those things. How many people died housing a small handful of elites? In what living accommodations did thoses slaves find themselves?

I can guarantee you that if ancient pharoahs had access to glass and concrete they would have used it. Especially if it made it cheaper or quicker to build what they wanted.

How do you house the population on this planet without making use of cheap to produce, scalable and durable materials such as steel or concrete?

The video makes the point that a single bag of cement costs €20 in an area where the average daily wage is €10.

I don't know quantities here - how would a bag of cement compare to two days' worth of hand-making bricks in terms of building materials?

Very favorably. Think of how big a bag of cement is. Using a timber mold like the one used in the video you can leave 100s (if not 1000s) of bricks to dry in one day. You need some materials like clay soil, straw and sand, some which might be sourced on-site. It might take a day or two in hot sun for the bricks to dry, but this can be done in large batches with enough space. They also can be fired in a kiln for extra strength, but that would forgo some CO2 benefits.

You know cement is not used to make the bricks right?

On one hand I'll refer you to the comment I was replying to:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37927320

On the other I'll point you to this common structural building material:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_block

I think a bag of cement would go a very long way for making mortar for a rock wall. Why make bricks when you can just use rocks and stick them together with a little bit of cement.

Bricks were made for uniformity so you could have it as a known quantity and spit them out of an assembly line. If you're making bricks, you've already lost this game.

The video at 6:11 briefly touches on making mortar and stone construction (along with visuals):

> binding material or mortar should be of the same constituency as the brick or stone white gypsum and sand mortar go well with sandstone mortar made of lime clay and sand is suitable for our newly developed mud bricks

https://youtu.be/f_q1pYl80pc?si=sP1GwbWT3UfFVsBW&t=371

25kg of cement is roughly 12L of 'concrete. 12L is 20cmx30x20cm (8x12x8 inches for the freedom loving folks)

From a quick Google search: 1m3 of concrete = 150l water + 250kg cement + 700kg sand + 1200kg aggregates.

Even if you used just cement and water I think you would get more than 12L from 25kg.

True, I meant pre-mixed bag of cement + sand.

>Even if you used just cement and water I think you would get more than 12L from 25kg.

The thing will crack very soon. The density of concrete is around 2.4g/cm3

a lot of that would be transport costs. So unless there are to produce the brick locally (and w/o a kiln - which would require something to burn), they are to experience similar issue with costs of the bricks.

In the video they are building the bricks on-site. I've done this before. And also built a kiln on-site with mud bricks (with a small team), though it takes a good design to get it to the high temperature required. Rammed earth is another natural building alternative where a formwork is built in-situ, infilled, and tamped down, once again with on-site materials. And from what I've seen it's absurdly strong, and can be polished such that it reflects like marble.

For extra challenge, any idea if a solar kiln could be practically used for mud bricks?

You need a temperature of about 1000°C to fire bricks, but more is better to get the moisture out. From cursory googling around it seems that a solar kiln wouldn't cut it, unless perhaps a very large solar collector was used... which upon further cursory googling yielded this:

https://helioscsp.com/concentrated-solar-power-for-high-temp...

https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/421794-the-next-solar-re...

Interesting, thanks. :)

I bet peaches are expensive in that area too, because there are no peach trees.

Concrete costs about $160 USD per cubic meter both in the USA and in Zaire (first African country I cound find a price), that works out to $4 USD a 35 kg bag, but in this case it's mixed and ready to pour.

If concrete factories were more common there there, I'm sure the price would be comparable for a material that is easier to work with, requires far less labor, etc etc. But they don't, and their traditional techniques work well for the area they're in. The moral to this story is, use what's local and does the job, and I feel like the only thing I got out of the video is some cool visuals of dudes building with bricks.

Of course, clay has a lot of benefits over concrete. It's lighter, insulates better, they can dig it out of the ground!

> The moral to this story is, use what's local and does the job

The content of the video is specifically directed at people of the developing world:

> this is the catastrophic reality I say in developing countries we have to go back to using natural building materials. historically we have a very rich examples of vernacular architecture that still stands we have to go back to our traditions to learn from but in the same time keeping up with the immense scientific progress so that a person from the 21st century can enjoy modern life commodities examples from South of France and Germany

Promoting locally available building materials for building houses is very different than saying one shouldn't incur any debt when building a home.

I guess titles for any documentary are going to be at least a bit intriguing, which could be the same as clickbait? But the full YouTube video title does specify it's talking about/to Africa:

"i'd rather build my house with my own earth than go into debt, Green Architecture, Africa"

> The video talks about "no cost at all", except it ignores the massive amount of labour and time required to hand make bricks from mud and go from there.

Cost and labor are two different things, especially for people whose market assign very little monetary value for their labor.

> How do you house the population on this planet without making use of cheap to produce, scalable and durable materials such as steel or concrete?

Well first of all, the global population is growing at a much lower pace than it used to, so the challenge is becoming easier and easier every year.

Then (reinforced) concrete is pretty much the opposite of durable, at least with the current “cheap and scalable” technology we use today with steel rebar that corrode and eventually destroy the structure.

And finally, the current technologies aren't the only one that are low-cost or scalable, we've been working with them and refining the entire supply chain efficiency, but that doesn't mean we cannot scale other technologies. And dismissing dirt as a possible replacement because it sounds like a thing of the past makes as little sense as would dismissing concrete because that's something the Romans used.

> Cost and labor are two different things, especially for people whose market assign very little monetary value for their labor

Plus the fact that many places (including the US) have tax burdens >= 50%.

So if it would cost $50K to hire a contractor to build a minimal house (labor + materials), we'd have to first sell $100K of our own time.

On top of that we'd be be fighting an uphill battle against inflation and land scarcity.

So it really doesn't take much for this kind of thing to be worthwhile.

That's the big factor driving DIY of all kinds. And a lot of other things which look strange and inefficient.

> specially for people whose market assign very little monetary value for their labor.

Those people get approximately the same amount of lifespan as anyone else (even less, in most cases). If they use up more of their lifespan making mud bricks (by hand!) rather than learning to read, spending time with their families, or maybe even just having fun, that is a waste of their lives, regardless of what monetary value the local economy puts on their time.

> Then (reinforced) concrete is pretty much the opposite of durable, at least with the current “cheap and scalable” technology we use today with steel rebar that corrode and eventually destroy the structure.

Less durable than unbaked mud bricks? I'm... skeptical, to put it very mildly.

Please tell me you're trolling, really…

By saying that reinforced concrete is stronger than unbaked mud bricks, and that the time used in making them by hand is not available for doing other things?

That's not "trolling". Those are simply facts.

I also felt the amount of labor saved by concrete and modern building materials was not discussed enough.

The presenter does mention several times "to build your own house" and it seems to be focused on impoverished communities or individuals. This would take a lot of time and labour, but it does not necessarily beget the use of forced/unethical labour.

I thought the big problem with housing wasn't construction costs so much as the game of monopoly being played with the underlying land.

Both are substantial and building costs is still often the majority in california.

Probably depends on the country in question. Western economies are having runaway pricing issues with land, but some of the non-western economies have different problems instead.

> The video talks about "no cost at all", except it ignores the massive amount of labour and time required to hand make bricks from mud and go from there.

That amused me too but I don't see a massive amount of labor.

I do quite intense physical labor. The guy making the bricks is using only one tiny tool. You can do the same with knee pads, using tables, you can put them on plates before you put them on the ground.

I cant see how long mixing takes but say he does 1 brick in 5 seconds. Thats 12 per minute! Say we want a wall 24 bricks wide and uhh 30 tall. That takes only 60 minutes! You.. ok maybe not you... but someone used to the work can make 8 such walls in a day!

When I was 18 I got out of school with a diploma as an electrician. Most kids didn't find a job, I got one because I was just that good. I wire houses for 2.40 euro per hour. My boss charged the customer 25 euro. The houses were sold for roughly 40 000. Today the 40 000 euro house costs about 280 000. My hours are in those houses! People are buying my labor for 73 times my earnings.

I earn a lot more now of course but to buy one for 280 000 at that salary I would have to work 116 667 hours or 2917 weeks 40 hours or 56 years.

Say my salary grew from 2 to 14 euro or 6 euro on average. Then it is only 46 667 hours, 1167 weeks 40 hours, 23 years.

I would have to rent and eat too of course! Say I would have been able to live on only 5 euro and save 1 each hour. Then it takes 135 years.

in 135 years I could make 201 601 440 bricks. Enough for 10 large cathedrals.

> cheap to produce, scalable and durable materials such as steel or concrete?

Cheap as in no matter how hard you work you never gonna get one?

Don't bother with the bricks, just make cob walls a meter thick. It will last until the next ice age.

Nice to see a focus on vernacular architecture and avoiding concrete. I just went through the process of having my own house built - a modern extension to a 200 year old vernacular cottage - and it was very frustrating how much modern architects were blindingly obsessed with concrete EVERYWHERE. And it is a horrific pollutant.

While there is a lot to be said for building codes, I sometimes wonder if the increasing strictness applied to individual homes is a way to ensure nobody has the option to affordably build their own home with their own hands.

(Though I only wonder, I'm not sure - because I really appreciate how great modern insulation and fire/earthquake safety is)

>And it is a horrific pollutant.

The CO2 produced for the manufacture of structural concrete (using ~14% cement) is estimated at 410 kg/m3 (<200kg/tonne)[0]

Bricks are around 0.5kg CO2 per kg produced (500kg/tonne). Bricks have bit lower (but similar) density than concrete, say 2000kg/m3. That makes them a lot more pollutant than concrete. Brick require a lot higher labour and transport costs as well.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_concre...

For fired bricks, yes; I believe unfired mudbrick embodies about half the CO2 of concrete, although it hasn't got the strength of fired bricks.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285041812_Embodied_...

Maybe this is why some cultures periodically set their homes on fire. Strengthens the walls, and it's also a very efficient cleaning method.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burned_house_horizon

> Maybe this is why some cultures periodically set their homes on fire. Strengthens the walls

Well, the wikipedia link that you provided says that there is no evidence for that claim since the houses were destroyed in the burning. Two possible explanations on wikipedia for why it was done are recycling of building material and symbolic end of houses.

the remark was about "architects were blindingly obsessed", concrete is a 'better alternative'

Which is a good reason to use wood.

> While there is a lot to be said for building codes, I sometimes wonder if the increasing strictness applied to individual homes is a way to ensure nobody has the option to affordably build their own home with their own hands.

I doubt there's a wide-ranging conspiracy to stop people from building their own houses in the western world. I'd rather you not build a rickety ramshackle hovel next to my house. That's why we have building codes. You're certainly able to build your own house, but it can't fall over onto mine, or cause a citywide fire, or be built with poisionous elements, or ...

I recently moved from a house built in 1918 to one built in 1965, and the complexity of the construction is immediately visible. The 1918 wood struction was rough hewn compared to the stuff in my 65 house. All the walls are straight in the 65 house. The 65 house stays cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. I don't have constant critter intrusion. That's just moving from a 100 year old house to a 60 year old house! The new construction in our area (all high quality - they knock down one of the old 1918 houses to build a new one, no idea about tract houses) takes the efficiency and performance a level up.

This is all possible through improving building codes - no one would bother with this stuff if it wasn't required.

Well, codes and modern technology. Like I said I'm not sure of it, it was just a weird contrast having a 200+ year old house and a brand new one and comparing the two.

I always view these things as very niave. Over the years I have seen many takes on how to build homes faster/cheaper/greener. Yes, I could build a small shed out of 2x4's and plywood for a couple hundred dollars, maybe even a thousand if we want to have a multi person dwelling. BUT, is it safe from the elements, is it structural, and the aspect almost everyone overlooks is, does it have PLUMBING AND ELECTRICAL. If you don't have a plan for this, its just a fort, not a home.

I agree the video is maybe a bit overoptimistic in that it does not discuss the labor required.

However I will challenge you on plumbing and electrical. RVs, Boats, and Vans have plumbing and electrical. There are wood burning stoves that are made to be used on small sail ships. If you look at the indian subcontinent water receptacles at the top of the roof is just a normal part of life.

You could just as easily add solar, a stove and composting toilets to your fort and it would become quite livable by most peoples standards.

These are obviously expenses, but it can be done relatively cheaply depending on what level of comfort you personally require. I for one would be fine skipping showers and having occasional power cuts at night.

how about running water?

Basic plumbing and electrical requires a lot less work (and cost) than building the structure.

Getting the services to the property are the most expensive part.

Fully self-sufficient (septic tank, water well and generator/solar) would be pretty expensive but still mostly a case of digging dirt and putting basic components together.

Building with local materials makes sense from an environmental standpoint by reducing transport energy. Since local materials will yield in different ways, architectural styles will need to adapt so buildings are resilient to the regional climate.

Extreme weather in regional climates demands better quality building materials, and traditional architectural styles may adapt poorly to new climates. Earthen bricks may work fine in the Middle East, but unless the bricks are fired, they cannot survive wetter regional climates (even with their claims of being waterproof), let alone a snowy climate. On the other hand, a Scandinavian-style A-frame will keep snow from accumulating on the roof, but such a design feature is extraneous for much of the world.

If you did want to build your own house using local materials, and you have wood available, rammed earth may be a better choice than unfired bricks, but it still won't perform too well in cold climates.

I'd wager that overall quality of life would be higher if a typical software engineer from San Francisco decided to save up $500K, acquire 10+ acres of land in the heartland, and build their own house with 90% of their own labor.

In the process, the mind will be forced to learn many new concepts. Lessons of project management and time management will be learned. The body will be excercised and muscle mass added, becoming more attractive to the opposite sex.

Hunt, gather, garden.

It's not an easier path, but perhaps it is a better path than slowly rotting away (mind and body) in an air conditioned cubicle.

You could also hit the gym at lunch or after work lol. Though I'm also a fan of the ending of "Candide"; I think it's lovely to "cultivate your garden" (a gross attempt to summarize the moral of that work), but you can find ways to do that in the modern world.

Personally doing something like this, except not from scratch, but a major renovation.

I'm not using concrete at all, I am reusing foundations, and mostly sustainable domestic wood and other recycled materials. I've been taught from a fairly young age about carpentry so I'm not ultra-green and I do use some local tradesmen, which I'm learning a lot from. I plan to do some more of my own projects so it's been great to work with them and gain more insights into how they work.

I've learned an incredible amount, there is something ultra inspiring and rewarding for me when working with physical material. I find it sort of unlocks parts of my brain I forgot I had. Working in the third dimension I guess?

Also, remember all that math you learned in school but hardly use? Well you'll likely be revisiting at least some of it! Which feels awesome.

Regarding the time management, project management etc, it's true, you have to learn all this, but more importantly you start to have to learn to compromise and really get good at communicating with people. A mistake in the physical world can get costly very fast.

Very interesting. Do you have a website with ideas or pictures maybe?

I don’t because I’m paranoid from a privacy standpoint :(

I know there's adverse selection going on, but everything I have seen from the TV programme Grand Designs tells me that this is a good way to great unhappiness and destroying your marriage.

> decided to save up $500K

For most people this is called "retirement"; by the time you've hit that total, you're over 60 and needed somewhere to live in the meantime.

500K is a lot of money. More than 99 percent of people make in a lifetime.

I would say, the goal should be to accomplish this without much money. Any money spent will add to the co2 footprint. (you can buy a lot of gas/concrete/coffee/meat/plastic/clean water... for that kind of money.)

Those are beautiful houses. I love the idea of doing something like this, but: A) I'm lazy, and B) I live in a place that has a ton of humidity. I wonder how such buildings would fare in a non-arid climate?

The interesting aspect of buildings like this is the need to tailor the design to the local environment. Humidity can be dealt with through careful consideration of airflow and heating.

Looking up Earthships can be a good starting point (though many of those are desert climate focused as well, it's not a necessity) for further research.

For example, I live in northern New England, which is heavy on trees and light on sand.

That's why our typical "vernacular architecture" is log cabins, not mud brick structures. Different advantages and disadvantages. Different construction process. Different materials. But still more sustainable than concrete.

they talk about water around timestamp 4:23

Wonder how well the houses shown here withstand earthquakes?

Forget about that, lets start with rain resistance.

The secret is "be in a reasonably dry climate" - this video is about construction in Africa, after all.

There are adobe structures dating all the way back to 500 BC [1] - if you've got the climate of Iran or Yemen or New Mexico it holds up adequately, especially if you only need a single storey.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe

A lack of rain resistance won't kill you suddenly. If mud brick or cave technology were so amazing, we'd all be living that way still. A better way would be to build structurally-sound, partially underground to moderate seasonal temperatures, against wind, hail, and forest fires, and placed to prevent floods.

Presumably not very well, because the houses have no real foundation. But when you look at a seismic hazard map you'll see that earthquakes don't happen in large swaths of the world.

Just ask all of the Moroccans and Afghanis who are now homeless and lost entire families recently.

And it will kill you and your family in an earthquake. So much for iconoclastic hipster utopian-aspirational thinking.

It is beautiful, but is it earthquake safe?

And what open source software would you use for the structural analysis?

It's not like concrete buildings were automatically earthquake-safe either…

Reinforced concrete is far stronger than unbaked mud bricks, by pretty much any measure you care to name.

Or you can simply look at the results on the ground.

Afghanistan (where mud brick and adobe are popular construction materials) recently suffered several earthquakes in the magnitude 6 range.

Death toll: many thousands.

Anchorage, Alaska (which has modern building codes that exclude mud bricks and the like) suffered a magnitude 7.1 earthquake in 2018.

Death toll: zero.

> Reinforced concrete is far stronger than unbaked mud bricks, by pretty much any measure you care to name.

No. Reinforced concrete crumbles after a few decades due to steel expanding under corrosion (rust takes more volume than steel, making the concrete crack, increasing corrosion, and so on). So reinforced concrete is tougher, and stronger, but also much less durable.

> Afghanistan (where mud brick and adobe are popular construction materials) recently suffered several earthquakes in the magnitude 6 range.

> Death toll: many thousands.

> Anchorage, Alaska (which has modern building codes that exclude mud bricks and the like) suffered a magnitude 7.1 earthquake in 2018.

> Death toll: zero.

Turkey this year, where many building where from the late 90 and later and build out of reinforced concrete (but without state-enforced regulation).

Death toll: many thousands. Eh!

Reinforced concrete doesn't make buildings earthquake-proof, (properly enforced) earthquake safety regulations do.

Unconvincing, disingenuous conflation of Gaza City apartments vs. most parking structures in the US.

>Turkey this year, where many building where from the late 90 and later and build out of reinforced concrete

They didn't follow the building codes, and were poorly constructed out of sub-standard materials, it's unsurprising things went horribly wrong.

My point exactly:

> Reinforced concrete doesn't make buildings earthquake-proof, (properly enforced) earthquake safety regulations do.

> Reinforced concrete crumbles after a few decades due to steel expanding under corrosion

This is caused by pore water. By comparison, mud bricks crumble instantly if they get wet, not "after a few decades".

> Reinforced concrete doesn't make buildings earthquake-proof, (properly enforced) earthquake safety regulations do.

Compared to mud bricks? Yes, yes, it does.

I'm sorry, reinforced concrete is a better building material than unbaked mud bricks by every possible metric, except maybe cost..

> This is caused by pore water. By comparison, mud bricks crumble instantly if they get wet, not "after a few decades

No… That's fascinating that we are having this discussion honesty. This shows you don't have any idea about how this works but are here saying nonsense with a sense if self satisfaction… FYI mud brick don't collapse when they're “wet”, soaked maybe they could but unless you put them in water or leave it unprotected from the top during monsoon, it's not happening.

> Compared to mud bricks? Yes, yes, it does

Yet Turkey… But hey, I know you don't give a shit about facts, you've just shown it above

> I'm sorry, reinforced concrete is a better building material than unbaked mud bricks by every possible metric, except maybe cost..

Ever heard of CO2 emissions?

I wonder what it would take to make that construction method earthquake-resistant.

Grand Designs - Africa Edition

I wish there were more easily accessible resources on how to actually do stuff like this.

You spotted a problem. Now this is an opportunity to build the solution you want.

Using the knowledge that they don't have ?

YouTube has you covered. These are the first links I found about rammed earth construction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjyGOOtOFik

How to add a doorway/window...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1EFWOXjvAU

How to add electrical and plumbing conduits...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTfd2_MoNxI

Might not be the best videos, but there's plenty to choose from.

Just build a log cabin and smear mud on the side. At least it won't kill you in an earthquake if it's built properly.

Last time someone built a house like that in France, on what used to be a trash landfill (which they cleaned up before hand), local authorities made them pay on daily basis until it gets destroyed, while picturing the family as dangerous psychopaths endengearing neighbours

Such initiatives have to be supported, or at least, not illegal in the country, so that it prevents any local dictator with 100 citizens from his power trip on vulnerable population

Edit: https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/bretagne/finistere/j...

I'm not sure what you are referring to but they probably just didn't have a building permit, and what they had built was likely not compliant enough to get permitted after the fact.

That they had cleaned up the landfill is rather irrelevant, and in fact it means that the terrain might not have been constructible at all.

Even if their project was interesting, as far as I can tell was destroyed because they didn't follow the established rules and built it illegally. But I might be wrong, feel free to send references for this thing.

https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/bretagne/finistere/j...

Well, isn't "following construction rules" basically means "use concrete and established plans"? I hope i am wrong, but sounds like it's just impossible to satisfy regulations while building something from dirt and grass

It's likely impossible without serious processing like fire and reinforcement and static and dynamic simulation.

Build things that use materials that aren't fire hazards and have been engineered to support themselves and the stresses they should survive are the primary imperatives of residential construction. The only reason the house I escaped a 2018 firestorm survived was that it was built to code. And the reason the house I was in in 1989 didn't collapse from a massive earthquake was it was also built to code. DIY lacking principles and conventions of civil engineering aren't cool, they're stupid for playing Russian roulette presuming they "know better". There are plenty of nontraditional housing projects that still follow sensible engineering principles.

It's a Natura2000 zone, they did build illegally without a permit in the first place, and argue that a retroactive permit could be given because of the small footprint.

Two tribunals at two different levels (additional authorities separate from the mayor) judged that they were wrong.

I would argue that you did not explain the actual situation honestly.

> Well, isn't "following construction rules" basically means "use concrete and established plans"?

It does mean that you need to submit plans beforehand. Concrete is absolutely not a hard requirement in France.

But building in a natural protected zone without a permit is asking for trouble. Maybe a small wooden shed would have been ok.

What if the municipality allowed them to squat on the landfill, and then 10 years later they all get cancer from PCBs or whatever that were in the landfill? Perhaps we have rules so people don't do stupid shit like build a house where people threw their garbage.

Unpermitted, unengineered deathtraps shouldn't be promoted or allowed. It's magical thinking that's not "helping" anyone.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com