Learn how to build the walls of your mud house in this post!
Once the concrete foundation is done, we can start placing the mud bricks.
You want the bricks to be placed in such a way that they're interlocked taking the weight of each other. Remember that with a mud house the wall itself is weight bearing, which means that laying them in such a way that they are as much as possible is like the meeting point of a jigsaw puzzle. This is especially true at the meeting points where one wall meets another.
What’s amazing about this kind of a mud house is that the mortar(the stuff that holds the bricks together) is actually the same material as the mud bricks itself. It’s simply mud and rice husk. So then it is all dry, the whole wall is the same material.
This is why you need to get the mud mix a little wet so it sticks better. As you get the brick wet, it glues itself to the mortar, as it's all the same material. This is also where the making of the bricks matters.
In an earlier post ( click here ) , I did mention that it's okay for the bricks to be not so smooth, that this is exactly why. It gives the mortar a surface to lock onto.
This is also why we are using nails on the side of the doors and windows. We cover the nails with the mortar, and in some cases with the bricks itself. This was, eventually when the mortar dries, the door and window become part of the wall. Very important point for those who live in areas with termite, be extra careful with use of the wood in the mud house.
We had no choice but to use termite insecticide and paint it onto the wood over several coats, and on top of that we painted another 2 layers of varnish.
For now, we have not yet seen termite activity on the wood, but there are some other mud houses I visited that had used mud on the lower floor and wood on the second floor. The termites have destroyed everything, as they can easily travel through the wood.
One funny structure you will find in our mud house is a metal structure that looks like TT ( see image below) , some of you might be wondering what this is doing in a mud house. This is a really important structure in a mud house because it makes sure that all the mud above these wood structures doesn't get crushed with the weight of the mud above. This is a weight bearing structure that is placed on top of windows or doors and the structure stays strong when weight is put on top of it and your objective is to make sure that the weight of all this mud right over the window does not crush down every window.
As we wanted to make sure there’s plenty of ventilation, there are a total of 5 windows in this tiny house, and not to forget one door from the outside and the bathroom . Mud houses are usually quite cool, but sometimes during summer time, they can get quite hot at night.
This is mainly because they accumulate heat during the day and release this heat during the evening. So the best way to solve this is to keep the windows open, so you can get rid of the hot air.
Let us know how you have built the walls to your mud house in the comments section below