Sunday, 1 February 2009

MUD (Balmoral Plastics)


For research into creating emergency shelter i am looking at one of mankind's oldest and most trusted construction materials...MUD! This material is extremely useful and exists in vast quantities below our feet and is also Eco-friendly.
However mud has some characteristics that people are not aware of such as its thermal qualities mud can be extremely warm due to its mass and mud also has the ability to cool itself.  These hidden properties are the reason our ancient ancestors chose to use this useful material and to this day all over the African continent villages and small towns are still created using mud.
Recently the scottish government has started to consider using clay and mud in the creation of homes instead of cement because of the availability and its thermal properties. Below is a link to a Times article about the use of mud in scottish homes. 

1 comment:

Steph said...

not sure how helpful this is to you.

but anyway...

I come from a village that starts with "inch". Inch is supposed to either mean island of mud or mud. It's one of the two (ignoring the fact that my village is sited on a mud site, ha ha) they would actually use the mud to make bricks! that's why there is a brick factory near where I live. It's called errol brick factory. You might want to look them up for the brick process making or for understanding about shrinakge or other limitations. Anyways the resource might comne in handy for you if you find it interesting.

sorry I can't really remember that much about the place. We went there on a primary school trip (so a long long time ago).