America’s housing crisis is not being solved.  We simply do not build enough housing that people can afford.         Construction firms prefer building upscale apartments.  Result: millions of Americans are un-housed; and millions more         will join them as the Covid moratorium on evictions ends.  We are facing an existential housing crisis across America. 

Our nonprofit doesn’t have “the answer” to a crisis this immense.  A problem this vast needs more than one magic “solution.”  We need solution paths that bring stakeholders together.  Our 501(c)(3), Solid Earth Communities, wants to be a resource in this.  We have learned to open common ground in the process of building affordable housing.    

   We’ve done it.  The Lakota Nation on the Pine Ridge Reservation built a house and a solar-powered office with   our machine.  It also was used in West Virginia to build dormitories at a science camp.  We built a 2,500-sq ft. showroom in Juarez, Mexico and the city also used our machine to build walls in local parks.  Villagers in Tibet used our machine to build 50 houses. This ancient approach to home-building now works in a much-updated form. 

  Our portable, patented machine makes compressed-earth blocks (CEB) that emerge from it tongue-in-groove,    so blocks can be dry-stacked, then cured for a week, ready to build solid earth walls without the need for mortar.  

  We can use sub-soil almost anywhere, with roughly 7% Portland cement as a binder—all of it compressed by   our machine’s diesel engine.  The CEB machine was designed using off-the-shelf parts without computer chips,   so it can be hauled and used in rough terrain and repaired in the field with commonly available parts. 

 We create jobs.  We need 4-6 workers to run our machine and stack blocks to cure.  Future owners can be hired       to help build their own houses; and working with each other, they can become neighbors even before they move in. 

Housing built with our machine offers benefits in cost, durability, and an unexpected level of comfort.

  Zero supply-chain issues.  Using sub-soil means no delays in getting building material.  It’s already on-site.   

   Low-cost.  CEB housing is truly affordable.  And if future residents work in stacking the blocks, this cuts the cost of hiring construction professionals to perform this highly time-consuming and repetitive but essential task. 

  Durable.  After a 2019 “climate bomb” flooded homes across the Lakota Nation, destroying many structures in Pine Ridge, among the few left standing were the house and office built with our machine.  And despite sitting for days in 3 feet of water, our pressurized earth-blocks remained solid and intact.  They had not turned to mud. 

Fire-proof.  Sound-proof.  And thermally efficient.  Earth does not burn, so CEB houses are fire-proof.  And at 12 inches thick, CEB walls also are sound-proof.  With only a single heat-transfer in 24 hours, not the 10-20 in “stick houses,” CEB houses need far less heating or air conditioning, cutting future ownership costs significantly. 

Comfortable in a way that truly feels good.  Owners of CEB houses report feeling “hugged” by their walls, since the soil in these walls retains its vitality.  Ask any gardener: touching the earth feels good.  And for people who   carry the trauma of PTSD or homelessness, living in earth-based housing can offer ongoing healing, day and night.