Six Days of Hands-On Adobe Education!

• Breakfast and Lunch Provided Daily.
• On-site Camping Available.

Russell Bezette (Arid Lands for Humanity) and his colleague Brock Wright (FutureAdobe) have a combined 60 years of experience building, consulting on, teaching about, and restoring adobe, brick, wood, and stone buildings throughout Utah.

You'll gain a practical understanding of adobe brick making that can be applied across the globe. Why buy adobes for $4 per brick when you can make them yourself for a fraction of that? Join us as we begin developing the infrastructure for our new campus, The Institute of Earth Technology.

These bricks will be donated to build a small 1100sf code-compliant home for our neighbors. It will be the first of its kind in Kane County. The structure will be built under a Kane County permit, with fully engineered plans and a certificate of occupancy.

Bezette, who will be joining us to facilitate a guest lecture and Q&A session, has an extensive knowledge of adobe, its mechanics, and its creation. Together with his apprentice (Wright), they have developed a recipe for the creation of adobes that are easy to source and produce regardless of your location or soil type. Dubbed the Reusable Building Supply (RBS), these adobes are composed primarily of waste material which, if destroyed, can be returned to the earth or recycled to create new bricks. The RBS is a water-resistant adobe that withstands incredible compressive force, making it suitable for DIY projects, remodels, accessory buildings, and even fully engineered homes with a certificate of occupancy.

Plans for this build (including fully engineered permit-ready blueprints and renderings) can be purchased here. Tuition for this course can be applied toward your purchase when buying the plans. Or stay for a second week of sponsored brick making (meals and camping included) and receive the plans free of cost as a gesture of our gratitude!

Daily Demonstrations & Hands On:

The Skills Needed to Make and Use Adobes

• Mixing/Molding
• Curing
• Quality Control
• Stacking / Storage
• Setting with Mortar
• Shaping Bricks

Lectures:

1: Basics of Earthen Building

• History and significance of earthen buildings.
• Benefits and challenges of earthen building.

2: Soils Analysis

• Elements of soil composition.
• The soil jar test.
• Testing for adobe.                
• Drop testing.
• Compression testing.

3: Stabilized Earth, & Types of Adobes

• Lime, portland, and asphalt: the pros & cons.
• Straw? Or “nah”?
• Alternatives to building with native soil.