Lab at home to determine the accuracy of earth on-site characterization

Abstract

Earth is a very sustainable and widely available building material to use directly on-site. Therefore it is helpful to have an easy way to assess the earth for its properties with little material or lab equipment used. The suitability of these tests is analyzed in this thesis. To determine which tests are accurate to conduct without lab equipment, two series of tests were conducted in a lab at home. Tests assessing similar properties are then done at a lab at ETH to assess the precision and the accuracy of the tests done at home. Two different earths are tested to see how well the tests work on different compositions of earth. It is found that the sieving, cylinder dropping, cylinder slump, pH and acid test are very suitable. The proctor, absorption and compressive strength tests can be modified to give good results with further experimentation but already show some good tendencies. The sedimentation and ball dropping tests are found not to be reliable in their accuracy when compared to the tests done at ETH.