Categoryinventions
LocationBrazil
BuilderFernando Pacheco
Year2004
SourceTiny Shiny Home — The Ultimate Guide to Hyperadobe Earthbag Building
Hyperadobe — EcoTech

EcoTech

Materiality of Higher Civilization Engineering

inventions

Hyperadobe

Brazil

Fernando Pacheco

2004

Earth-filled raschel mesh tube walls — a refinement of superadobe requiring no barbed wire and half the material cost.

Constraints: superadobe required barbed wire between every layer (cost, danger, skill); polypropylene tubes degraded in sunlight; method was effectively patent-restricted

Resources available: raschel knit fabric (same open-mesh netting used to bag fruit), native soil at 30%+ clay, manual labor

Solution: UV-treated mesh tubes filled with a 1/3 sand / 1/3 rock / 1/3 clay mix, tamped in layers — the open weave locks layers together mechanically, eliminating barbed wire; cost drops to $0.27/linear foot vs $0.46 for superadobe; no patent, freely available

Source: Tiny Shiny Home — The Ultimate Guide to Hyperadobe Earthbag Building

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