58 
House & Garden 
BUILDING WITH PISE DE TERRE 
The High Cost of Construction Has Caused a Revival hi Tamped Earth JJhlls—What 
Tools Are Required-—The Type of Soil To Use 
RUFUS B. VALENTINE 
ISE DE TERRE building is one of the 
oldest forms of house construction known. 
During the past six months the high cost of 
building in England has caused a revival in 
this use of earth walls. For precisely the same 
reason it will interest readers of House & 
Garden to know the history and practical de¬ 
tails of using pise de terre. With brick, stone 
and even shingles bringing sky-high prices and 
carpenters and masons drawing down capi¬ 
talist salaries, this simple and ancient form, 
of house construction deserves serious study. 
Old Tamped Earth Walls 
The use of tamped earth walls-—-for that 
is what pise de terre is—is mentioned by such 
an ancient as Pliny in his Sixth Book of the 
Natural History. He calls them formacean 
walls, or “earth rammed hard between boards,” 
and he says that frost, heat nor cold have any 
effect on these walls, which are 
as imperishable as the pise watch 
towers Hannibal built on the hill¬ 
tops in Spain. In New Mexico 
and Arizona are found tamped 
earth walls that are said to be 
4,000 years old. In the Rhone 
Valley, in Australia, in South 
Africa and in England pise de 
terre has long been a recognized 
method for making walls. So 
much for the historic precedent. 
We quote these facts to show that 
not only can house walls be made 
of tamped earth, but that they 
will last. 
It is necessary to remember 
that pise de terre is no adobe. 
In making an adobe wall one uses 
a clay soil mixed with water and 
some straw. Often dung has 
been used for that purpose. You 
find adobe used in dry southern 
climates where entire walls are 
made of it, the sun baking the 
clay to a hard surface; and you 
find it used in northwestern Can¬ 
ada, where the Lithuanians stucco 
their log houses with a mixture of 
clay, straw, dung and water. 
What Pise' de Terre Is 
Pise de terre, on the other hand, requires 
loam. A pure clay or pure sand must not be 
used; the one would crack and the other does 
not have the required cohesion. A mixture of 
either sand or clay with loam makes a good 
basis. The loam should be fairly free from 
stones and roots. The loam, when packed 
down with a tamper until it rings, consoli¬ 
dates into an earth stone that t)ecomes harder 
with the years. Nothing is required to make 
the loam bind, as the tamping will do this. No 
water need be mixed with the loam. The only 
rule to remember is that you tamp the dry 
earth until it rings. 
Having constructed the foundation of the 
house of stone, brick or cement, set up forms 
for a wall eight inches, fourteen inches or 
twelve inches thick. The thickness will de¬ 
pend on the sort of roof the walls will support. 
The foundations should be above the ground 
and the walls built directly on them. The 
j)resence of the cellar makes no difference. The 
forms can be the same as those used in making 
a concrete wall, although they should be locked 
firmly in place so that the tamping does not 
spread them. When one section of wall has 
been tamped the forms can be moved to an¬ 
other. Thus only one set of forms is required. 
No reinforcement, as in building a concrete 
wall, is required, and no inner air space should 
be left. In door and window spaces a form 
should be set the size to accommodate the 
frames and the wall tamped around and above 
them. To assure solid lintels there can be used 
a piece of reinforcement—a strip of timber 
or a bar of iron. Windows and doors, therefore, 
are not cut out after the wall is built. Where 
fireplaces come the brick insertions can be 
built up and the loam can be tamped in around 
the Ijrick or terra cotta flues. 
This wall will be without joints—a mono¬ 
lithic structure. Its thickness is too dense for 
mice or rats to penetrate or nest in. 
When the top of the wall is reached the floor 
timbers can be set in place. The ends of tlie 
timbers can be given a coating of tar to pre¬ 
vent rotting, although this is not necessary 
since in the old examples of pise de terre 
Iniilding the original timbers are in sound con¬ 
dition '’fter several centuries. 
Available Purposes 
Pise de terre can be used for garden walls, 
sheds, farm buildings and is especially adapt¬ 
able to small house construction. The walls 
will support a two-story house, but should not 
be built higher. The only machinery required 
are the forms and a tamper—a round flat iron 
on a wooden handle. Unskilled labor is all 
that one requires. 
This hand tamping, in the English experi¬ 
ments, required two unskilled laborers a month 
to complete the pise walls for a six-room cot¬ 
tage. With a pneumatic tamper—worked on 
the principle of a pneumatic drill—^the same 
work could be accomplished by two men in a 
week or ten days. 
Roof and Wall Finishes 
Although they are not necessary, it is advis¬ 
able that the eaves have a wide overhang. This 
gives the wall a measure of protection from the 
top. However, the elements will not effect the 
wall whether it has a finished surface or is left 
as originally tamped. The walls naturally 
harden in the atmosphere. 
The outside walls may be left unfinished or 
given a spray coat of tar and then whitewashed 
or a thin spray of concrete. The inside walls 
can be plastered over wire lath laid on studs, 
or the walls merely whitewashed 
—a finish preferable for a coun¬ 
try cottage. 
The roof for a pise de terre 
house is no different from that of 
any other sort of house. Timbers 
set at a pitch will be easily carried 
by the^ walls, or the regular tim¬ 
ber structure can be set up, cov¬ 
ered with builders’ paper and 
shingles. For a cheaper effect, 
where one is building a shed, cor¬ 
rugated iron or tar paper can be 
used. One of the English ex¬ 
perimenters suggests corrugated 
iron laid over the roof timbers 
covered with turf. That treatment 
would give the cottage an unusual 
picturesqueness—a green sod roof 
over one’s head! The corrugated 
iron would prevent dampness 
from coming down, and the walls, 
of course, harden and prevent the 
penetration of dampness through 
them. It is a remarkable fact— 
not true of the concrete house— 
that the pise de terre house is 
ready for occupancy as soon as it 
is finished. 
This manner of building may 
seem absurdly simple, but it can 
be done and the result is a livable, 
low-cost house. It remains only for Ameri¬ 
can builders to experiment with it here. 
The varieties of our climate afford sufficient 
range to give dependable results, although, as 
we have already seen, pise de terre has been 
successful in such widely divergent climates 
as Arizona, South Africa, France and Eng¬ 
land. In any given locality some experiment¬ 
ing may be necessary to detennine the best 
sort of loam, but this is not difficult. 
All one needs is a set of forms, which any 
carpenter or man handy with tools can make; 
a tamper, which a local blacksmith can beat 
into shape; a large mesh screen to remove big 
stones from the loam; and enough loam. In 
many cases the soil dug from the cellar exca¬ 
vation will suffice. Given these few imple¬ 
ments and materials one can set to work and 
make his own house walls, walls which are 
solid in the literal sense. 
O 
To build a wall the loam is tamped down between forms—tamped 
until it rings. When one section of wall is finished, move the forms 
to the higher section. In time the wall will take on the consistency 
of weathered sandstone 
