ADVANTAGES OF MUDBRICK OVER CONVENTIONAL BURNT CLAY BRICK (AND OTHER CONVENTIONAL MATERIALS)

• Mudbrick making and laying is very simple and can be easily learnt by even the most practically inexperienced person.

• If building for oneself the cost of bricks and bricklaying can be reduced to nothing (usually about 20% of building cost)

• If paying someone else to build, using mudbricks can give unemployed, unskilled people jobs rather than machines doing the work. (vitally important in South Africa and other nations with large numbers of unemployed unskilled people)

• Mudbricks are much more environmentally appropriate.

• Material is extracted locally.

• No transportation, therefore no energy used or pollution caused.

• No fossil fuels used in manufacture. (burnt bricks have one of highest energy content of all building materials.

• Much greater density, therefore greater thermal capacity, therefore greater thermal control, than burnt brick.

• When the building is discarded in the future the mudbrick (if not polluted by additives) will go back into the soil, unlike other building materials such as burnt brick.

• Mudbrick walls have much greater variation in shape, texture and colour than most burnt clay bricks and so can be more aesthetically pleasing.

• Because of the greater mouldability of mudbricks, a greater flexibility in wall shape is possible with mudbrick than burnt brick.