the Handbook for Primitive Living

in the Twenty-First Century.

Imagine if tomorrow you had no hydro, no running water, no fuel, no phone. How could you survive? This site is a thought experiment designed to answer that question.

Making Adobe Bricks

You require some form of shelter. Be it snow, wind, rain, or sun that you need to escape, you need shelter. Unless you’re nomadic, you will probably want something semi-permanent.

One solution for Do-It-Yourselfers is to build using adobe bricks. Adobe structures extremely varied in their construction, but I’m going to concentrate on adobe bricks specifically. As long as you have access to water, sand, and clay-rich soil, you can make adobe bricks. Optional materials that would give your bricks further strength would be straw, dried grass, or other similar materials.

There are many online resources explaining how to make adobe bricks so I’ll paraphrase:

1. Find some clay-rich soil, sand, and water.
2. Mix a quantity of sand into a quantity clay (note quantities of each), and add water. Try to make a mud ball that holds together, doesn’t crack, but pulls apart with some force. Add sand, clay, and water as needed until you find the right consistency, further noting your additions.
3. Form your clay-sand mixture into a brick. This can be done by hand, in a shoebox, in a wooden form, or however you choose.
4. Remove the brick from the form and let it dry. After it becomes hard enough to handle, set it on edge to further speed drying. Allow a few days to dry.
5. If cracks appear in the brick, too much clay has been used. Add more sand to your mixture and try again.
6. Perform a drop test on a brick from waist height. If the brick shatters, too much sand was used in the brick. Use less sand and try another batch.

It would be wise to make a small test batch to ensure you have your mixture correct before making hundreds of cracked or brittle bricks.

One word of caution - adobe bricks are simply clay, sand, and water. Don’t expect them to be waterproof, or to last very long unprotected from the rain. Use an exterior cover and/or a wide roof overhang to shield your adobe from undue moisture, and keep an eye on drainage around your shelter.