Solid Earth Adobe Buildings Ltd

Solid Earth Adobe Buildings Ltd We share our extensive knowledge online to empower people the world over to build healthy living spaces with natural materials.

Join our group "Earthbuilding School"

03/09/2026

It is a fair thing to wonder. Building with earth is physical, and it seems like the kind of skill that only transfers when someone is standing next to you with their hands in the same mix.
What decides whether a build goes well is something that happens long before anyone touches material. There are decisions to make about your site, your climate, your design, and the order you tackle things in. That thinking is the part most people get wrong, and it is exactly the part that teaches well online, at your own pace, with someone guiding your decisions. The physical skills come faster than you would expect once the thinking underneath them is sound, and mentorship means you are never doing the hands-on part blind.
Learning online does not mean learning alone. It means having the reasoning in place before you start moving earth around.
Comment CLAY and I will send you the free Clay to Code class.

02/09/2026

You have read the books and watched the videos and maybe even done a course, and you still feel like you are standing at the edge of something you cannot step into. It is easy to read that as not being ready, or not being the kind of person who builds.
It is almost never that. What usually happens is that earth building gets handed to people in pieces, a bit about light earth here, a bit about foundations there, with no thread running through it. Without the order, every new fact just lands on the pile. With it, the same information finally has somewhere to go.
You were never short on ability. You were short on a map.
Comment CLAY and I will send you the free Clay to Code class.

30/08/2026

The picture people carry is bare earth straight onto cold ground, which would of course be freezing. A modern earthen floor is not built that way. It goes down over an insulated base, often an insulated concrete slab, so there is a layer of insulation between the ground and the floor you walk on. The earth on top is the finish, warmed from below, and it holds that warmth well because of its mass.
Our earth building standard covers earthen floors and includes the detail for laying one over an insulated slab, so this is a properly worked out way to build rather than an experiment. Done this way an earthen floor feels warm underfoot, works beautifully with underfloor heating, and gives you a seamless surface with real depth of colour.
An earthen floor being cold comes down to how it is built, and warm is very much on the menu.
Comment CLAY and I will send you the free Clay to Code class.

29/08/2026

I know that voice well, because I am self-taught. I studied architecture for a while and left, and everything hands-on I learned by doing it, alongside one good teacher for a time and a lot of trial and error. For years, no matter what I built, part of me kept whispering that I was not properly qualified.
I co-authored New Zealand's earth building standards. I helped develop a new kind of insulating structural earth brick that went through university research and earthquake testing. And that voice was still there when I submitted the research paper. What I have come to understand is that the voice is not a verdict on your ability. Almost everyone doing real work carries some version of it, and it tends to be loudest in the people who care most about doing the work well.
You do not need a trade background to belong in this. You need to start, and to keep going.
Comment CLAY and I will send you the free Clay to Code class.

28/08/2026

Maybe you are one of them. You look at a finished wall or a smooth plastered surface and assume it takes a steady, practiced hand you were simply not born with, so you decide this is for other people.
Earth is one of the most forgiving materials you can work with. If a cob mix is not right, you can open it up and add to it. If an earthen plaster coat goes wrong, you can wet it back and start again. Very little in this work is ruined permanently by a mistake, which is exactly why it suits people who are new. You are allowed to be clumsy while you learn, because the material lets you.
Being handy is not the entry requirement. A willingness to have a go and get it wrong a few times is.
Comment CLAY and I will send you the free Clay to Code class.

27/08/2026

It happens constantly, and most of the time the building was not failing. It was just easier to demolish it than to understand it. A lot of those old walls were earth, lime, and timber, and they were often in better condition than anyone assumed once someone actually looked.
Earth and lime buildings are made to be maintained rather than replaced. A lime render can be patched, an earthen wall can be repaired with the very same material it was built from, and the building carries on. A good part of my work is helping people keep buildings alive instead of sending them to landfill.
Tearing something down is not the only option, and often it is not the best one.
Comment CLAY and I will send you the free Clay to Code class.

26/08/2026

You might spend your days doing work that leaves nothing behind you can touch. Emails, meetings, screens. And underneath that there is often a quiet pull toward something solid, something you shaped yourself that will be long-lived.
Building with earth is one of the few places a person with no experience can actually do that. Adobe and cob are forgiving. You do not need fine tools or a trade background, you need your hands and the right order to work in.
That dream you have is a good one. It is worth following.
Comment CLAY and I will send you the free Clay to Code class.

23/08/2026

The fear is that you would be forever repairing it, that it is somehow more fragile than a conventional house. In practice a well built earth building asks for a small amount of regular attention rather than a lot of dramatic repair, and that attention is straightforward.
Our earth building standard actually includes a maintenance schedule, because looking after the building is treated as a normal part of owning one, not a sign something has gone wrong. An earth or lime plaster can be patched with the same material it was made from, so a knock or a worn patch is a simple fix rather than a specialist job. This is part of why these buildings last for generations. They are made to be looked after with your own hands, using materials you already understand.
Low maintenance and no maintenance are different things, and an earth building sits comfortably in the first.
Comment CLAY and I will send you the free Clay to Code class.

22/08/2026

Mine was dropping out of architecture. I had studied it for a couple of years in Switzerland, only because it was the closest thing to earth building I could find, and there was no way to learn earth building formally at the time. Then I had a baby and left the course, and from the outside that looked like the end of something.
It was actually the start. Becoming a mother made me bold enough to say the thing I had been circling for years, which was that I did not want to design buildings, I wanted to build them, with my hands, out of earth. I moved back to New Zealand with two very young children, took on a mud brick yard in Nelson, and that became my business.
The detour was not a failure. It was the thing that finally told me what I actually wanted.
Comment CLAY and I will send you the free Clay to Code class.

Address

4 Kanuka Rise
Nelson
7071

Telephone

0064 3 545 0240

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