Talk:Rammed earth

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Contents 1 Categories? 2 Green building section merger proposal 3 Old buildings 4 Hmm... 5 Bias

[edit] Categories?

I'm wondering whether there should be a category called "sustainable technology" - but perhaps it would overlap too much with categories like Category:Appropriate technology & Category:Renewable energy. For the moment, I'll just use Category:Appropriate technology (which is a subcategory of Category:Development and Category:Sustainability).

In the cases of Rammed earth, Adobe & Dutch brick, I think they reasonably belong in Category:Appropriate technology. At the moment, though, the Appropriate technology aspect of these technologies is not developed in the articles. Anyway, feel free to make a different edit or suggestion.

btw, Mudbrick needs either a lot of work, or to be merged with the Adobe article.

(I posted this comment also on Talk:Adobe) --Singkong2005 03:04, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I know what you mean. A friend of mine visited a rammed earth build in Scotland where the cold and rain had turned most of the site into a muddy quagmire. Given the (normally) high cost of labour in the UK, you could argue that it is most inappropriate technology here, but it still has the sustainability advantages.

Categorisation can get quite tricky in the fine details. You really need to find a group of like-minded editors to help sort out the best categorisation structure and then place articles appropriately. A good approach can be to setup a Wikipedia:WikiProject on Green Building or the like, to help coordinate activity. Another thing to consider is that articles and list-type articles can also be a useful way of organising related articles and also have the advantage that subtleties can be explained along the way. For example, we don't appear to have an article on sustainable technology, which might be a good start. -- Solipsist 07:53, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Maybe the varying things I've read about lifespan of these materials reflects the different environments they were in.

I've started the sustainable technology article. --Singkong2005 03:08, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Green building section merger proposal

User:Lean greener has made significant contributions to the Rammed Earth Construction section of the Green building article. I suggest that that content would be better located here, with a paragraph left behind in the Green building article. Is there any agreement?

User:xxxMicrobexxx I started this article - ironically exactly 3 years ago to the day, March 8th 2004. It seems that the item at Green Building is pretty much a duplication of what is here with a few other pieces of information. Obviously it is preferable to have all the info in one place. Go for it.

With the support of User:xxxMicrobexxx above, User:Greener72 on the Green building talk page and User:Lean greener on his talk page, I have merged the Rammed earth section from Green building into this article.--Jrsnbarn 15:29, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Old buildings

I'd like examples of old buildings (with pics) still standing with discussion of how they aged. Has this been used for some interesting old palace or mosque or something like that? --84.20.17.84 08:18, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hmm...

The current introduction says:

Rammed earth construction, also known as pisé de terre or simply pisé, is an age-old building method that has seen a revival in recent years as people seek low-impact building materials and natural building methods.

Isn't rammed earth construction, by definition, high-impact? :-D --Sneftel (talk) 16:04, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Good point, that is jarring, and a bit funny. To keep an encyclopedic tone in the intro, some other phrase, like "more environmentally correct" (although I don't like that phrase either) should be substituted. doncram (talk) 20:52, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bias

This article extols the virtues of rammed earth without discussing its drawbacks or unsuitable uses to anything like the same extent. 128.232.228.174 (talk) 18:25, 21 May 2008 (UTC)