Awhi Farm : Earth bag house and pumice brick dome

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Just off the main artery of the farm, is a pretty impressive structure rising up out of the bush.
Packed earth and brick dome house
Dome and guide for vault
This is an earth bag building (or Super Adobe), with the addition of a dome which is the current construction task.
The bags are a plastic weave that is filled with a mixture of earth and concrete. The bags are stacked and pounded to form the structure.
The bricks for the dome are made from cement, clay, and pumice. It's squeezed into shape in a brick press.
There is a plan to puncture the curve of the dome with round wood framed windows.

Something I've noticed while working on these construction projects is that young men are using mobile phones like old fashioned transistor radio. They trigger a play-list, and the workspace is filled with tinny audio from the phones tiny internal speaker.

A few weeks back a girl from Malaysia was working on the site and she had some amazing little speakers which hooked into her phone, and the sound reproduction didn't grate on my nerves.



Mixing up the mortar for the bricks 
pivoting arm is the jig used to set the bricks

All the bricks are made 'on site'
Building a new buttress in the rear

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