Building with Lime Stabilized Soil

Stafford Holmes, Bee Rowan

How best can we stimulate lasting recovery from floods, earthquakes, and other climate disasters, with limited resources and funds? How can we deliver housing and adequate shelter that will protect as many people as possible across the world from anticipated future floods or extreme weather? Widely...

Rammed Earth Structures

Julian Keable, Rowland Keable

Ramming earth has been a method of construction for centuries in many parts of the world and the technique can produce buildings that are strong, durable, safe and desirable. Because earth is an abundant and cheap resource, rammed earth buildings are often very economical. To achieve the best result...

Fuel for Free?

Kelvin Mason

This book covers the use of wastes in firing clay bricks via case studies in Zimbabwe, Sudan, Sri Lanka, and Peru. With respect to both livelihoods and the environment, energy efficiency in brickmaking is critical. Not only does increasing energy efficiency serve to reduce brickmakers’ fuel costs an...

Building with Lime

Stafford Holmes, Michael Wingate

The most common raw material for making lime is limestone, which is one of the world’s most abundant minerals, widely available in many countries. Lime has many other uses, but this book is specifically about its use in building and construction, for which it has a proven track record through severa...

Timber Pole Construction

Lionel Jayanetti

The book offers a general introduction to timber poles as a construction material. Timber poles have served throughout history as a low-cost, environmentally friendly and structurally efficient building resource. As a result of the establishment of both commercial plantations and community forestry...

Small Scale Vertical Shaft Lime Kiln

Kelvin Mason

The Small Scale Vertical Shaft Lime Kiln covers in depth the design, construction, and operation of a particular type of lime kiln: a continuous, natural draught, mixed feed, vertical shaft kiln (VSK). The manual focuses on 'small-scale' production and is aimed at lime-burners, technologists and fie...

Building in Partnership with the Maasai

This publication presents the process of participatory technology development (PTD) working with local training institutions, women's groups and development agents to design and build improved housing. Experiments with stabilised soil blocks, rammed earth walling, ferro-cement roofing and rainwater...

Sustaining Agricultural Biodiversity

Forum for Food Sovereignty

"Genetic resources are the result of millennia of evolution and belong to all of humanity. Therefore, there should be a prohibition on biopiracy and patents on living organisms, including the development of sterile varieties through genetic engineering processes. Seeds are the patrimony of all of hu...

Building with Earth

John Norton

This handbook provides practical help in choosing whether to, and how to build with earth, from soil selection to construction and maintenance. Earth can achieve very high quality and durability as a building material. It is also frequently used by people with few other resources for building. In ma...

Stone

Asher Shadmon

This useful general survey describes the varieties and uses of stone as a building material - whether cut or field-stone - and how to extract, work and use it. A new chapter on stone and the environment emphasizes the importance of planning, waste recycling and quarry rehabilitation as part of the e...