page_title: Rammed earth
section_title: Environmental effects and sustainability
hierarchical_section_title: Rammed earth / Environmental effects and sustainability
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo by Tristan Shephard
context_page_description: Rammed earth, also known as taipa in Portuguese, tapial or tapia in Spanish, pisé in French, and hāngtǔ in Chinese, is a technique for constructing foundations, floors, and walls using natural raw materials such as earth, chalk, lime, or gravel. It is an ancient method that has been revived recently as a sustainable building method.
  Edifices formed of rammed earth are on every continent except Antarctica, in a range of environments including temperate, wet, semiarid desert, montane, and tropical regions. The availability of suitable soil and a building design appropriate for local climatic conditions are the factors that favour its use.
context_section_description: Edifices of rammed earth are more sustainable and environmentally friendly than other building techniques that use more cement and other chemicals. Because rammed-earth edifices use locally available materials, they usually have low embodied energy and generate very little waste. The soils used are typically subsoil which conserve the topsoil for agriculture. When the soil excavated in preparation for a foundation can be used, the cost and energy consumption of transportation are minimal. Rammed earth is probably the least environmentally detrimental construction material and technique that is readily and commercially available today to construct solid masonry edifices. Rammed earth has potentially low manufacturing impact, contingent on the amount of cement and the amount that is locally sourced; it is often quarried aggregates rather than "earth".
  Formwork is removable and can be reused, reducing the need for lumber.
  Mixing cement with the soil can counteract sustainable benefits such as low embodied energy and humidity regulation because manufacture of the cement itself adds to the global carbon dioxide burden at a rate of 1.25 tonnes per tonne of cement produced.
  Rammed earth can contribute to the overall energy efficiency of edifices: the density, thickness, and thermal conductivity of rammed earth render it an especially suitable material for passive solar heating. Warmth requires almost 12 hours to be conducted through a wall 35 cm (14 in) thick.
  Rammed-earth construction may also reduce the ecological impacts of deforestation and the toxicity of artificial materials associated with conventional construction techniques.
  Although it has low greenhouse gas emissions in theory, transportation and the production of cement can add significantly to the overall emissions of modern rammed earth construction. The most basic kind of traditional rammed earth has very low greenhouse gas emissions but the more engineered and processed variant of rammed earth has the potential for significant emissions.
caption: Rammed-earth trombe wall constructed by Design Build Bluff
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