--- In
papercreters@yahoogroups.com, Perry Way <perryway@...> wrote:
>
> Hello papercreters, I have some happy news and not so happy news. First the
> happy news, I bought a parcel of land! It is 2.5 acres in the Central
> Californian outback. It is off the grid but if I want to pipe into
> electricity it is one lot away.
>
> The not so happy news stems from my newfound apprehension about my first
> holes dug on the property.
>
> I need to find someone who has some knowledge or experience on soil. Before
> I build I need to know what I'm up against on this property. There are
> patches of the soil which are thin of vegetation and has a white powder on
> the surface. So I dug some holes, the white part seemed to be kind of
> shallow and once I got down deeper than that it looked like very very nice
> clay-loam soil. Easily breaks up and all probably because it is all fluffed
> up from vegatation with a kazillion microscopic roots in just one shovel
> full. As I dug deeper though, the soil looked very nice. It has
> practically no sand, but it has a lot of loam. So I grabbed a handful to do
> a compression test on it. Squeezed and released and it stuck together real
> good and it got smaller too. So I kept squeezing to see how compact I could
> get it with just my hand and it had to have compressed at least 1/3 to 1/2.
> Suddenly I had visions of a cob house. This soil is really good for cob, I
> think. But maybe not.... A day later, I'm at work to pass the good news to
> my buddy about buying this land. So I found my clay ball, it had lots of
> white crystals forming on the surface! Now hours later, the area I swiped
> with my finger is regrowing little hairs little crystals forming on the
> surface. Now this soil came from deep in the hole I dug. It had nothing
> visible white about it at all. It was only moist. (we just had a spot of
> rain a couple of times in the past week at that location). Fast forward to
> another hole I dug, I dug about half a dozen holes in various places. This
> other hole I dug I got down to the clay where it is noticeably clay and hard
> to dig and I got a half a shovel full of it and noticed white specks in the
> clay. More than specks actually. About 1/4 inch in size they were
> everywhere equally. Not so the clay looked white, but more like how much
> chocolate is in chocolate chip ice cream on one of the cheap brands. Back
> to the clay ball forming white powder on surface, I had had visions of
> perimeter fruit trees, some row crops (its 2.5 acres) and an off the grid
> cob house which is dirt cheap (haha) but now I'm wondering about soil
> quality not just for the fruit trees in my mind but also for anything that
> would use the soil. In other words I'm wondering if I would be able to use
> this soil in papercrete as an additive, or rammed earth, or cob or adobe or
> whatever uses there are for soil for that matter.
>
> Back to finding someone with knowledge or experience on soil, if anyone has
> someone they could direct me to, I'd appreciate it a lot!
>
> Perry
>
