Make Your Own Bricks from Soil

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Author's barn was built of soil-cement blocks using CINVA Ram. It has already withstood a rainy Pacific northwest winter.
Author's barn was built of soil-cement blocks using CINVA Ram. It has already withstood a rainy Pacific northwest winter.
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Making blocks is labor intensive, but not difficult per se. Children can sift soil and fill calibrated buckets for adult in charge.
Making blocks is labor intensive, but not difficult per se. Children can sift soil and fill calibrated buckets for adult in charge.
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Not only barns, but hearths can be made with soil blocks.
Not only barns, but hearths can be made with soil blocks.

A few years ago–while reading Ken Kern’s fine book, The Owner-Built Home, I came across something which brought me right up out of my chair: the CINVA Ram, a manually operated machine that makes ordinary earth into substantial 4 X 6 X 12-inch construction bricks.

Since I’m always on the lookout for inexpensive building supplies, I was (to say the least) intrigued by the idea of turning soil into concrete-like blocks. I confess I was skeptical, however, that plain old garden-variety dirt –for gosh sakes–could be used as a construction medium here in the cold, damp eastern edge of Washington State.

After reading more about compacted earth, however, I learned that its main limitation –vulnerability to attack by moisture –could be overcome through the addition of cement to the raw soil as a “stabilizing agent”. Well, that was enough to convince me to give it a try . . . so I chipped in with some friends on a CINVA Ram and proceeded to build my barn, chicken house, and hearth entirely out of soil-cement blocks.

Now, two years later, I’m happy to report that the structures have all successfully weathered one reasonably severe winter and, in general, have lived up to my highest expectations. Soil-cement not only has excellent insulative qualities but is strong, durable, fireproof, easy to work with, and extremely low in cost. (My blocks set me back three cents each . . . and they wouldn’t even have cost that much if I’d not been forced to buy clay and sand to add to our silty local soil!) In short, soil-cement is everything I think a building material should be.

The CINVA Ram

  • Published on May 1, 1976
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