InspectAPedia®   -   Search InspectApedia

Traditional adobe buidling in Tucson (C) Daniel Friedman Adobe Construction
in modern North America

Adobe building construction:

Photos of antique and modern adobe-constructed buildings in North America. We also provide links to articles on adobe construction, adobe repair, the preservation of historic adobe structures, and the history of adobe construction in the United States and Mexico.

This artiucle series provides a photo guide to determining the age of a residential or light commercial building by examination of the architectural style of construction or the building materials and components that were used in the structure.

InspectAPedia tolerates no conflicts of interest. We have no relationship with advertisers, products, or services discussed at this website.

Adobe construction in North America

Adobe bricks drying in the sun, Los Olivos, Guanajuato, Mexico (C) Daniel Friedman

Definition of Adobe: Adobe, from the Spanish adobe or mud brick, is a building material, typically in large earthen-brick form, made frrom a mixture of water, about 15% earth or clay, about 10-30% silt,and about 55-75% sand.

Adobe bricks typicaly include also materials for structural strength such as straw, pebbles, shells, manure, and other organics. The asobe bricks are dried in the sun to a hardened form.

In construction of walls, adobe bricks are set using a bedding mortar of the same type of mud as was used to form the adobe bricks themselves.

Photo: adobe bricks drying in the sun at Los Olivos, above the city of Guanajuato, Mexico. These adobe bricks vary in size, even in the same production run, as shown in our photo, and adobe will vary as well as in constituents - also shown in the photo.

In Mexico adobe bricks may weigh 25 pounds or considerably more, with large adobe bricks weighing as much as 100 pounds.

In size adobe bricks vary from about 4x8x12" (small adobe bricks) to much larger sizes. Some adobe builders use wider rectangular adobe such as New Zealand's Solid Earth builders providing square 280x280x130mm building adob e bricks along with larger 430x280x130mm corner adobe bricks.

Shaped and compacted earth was used as early as 8300 B.C. as a construction material for the ancient city of Jericho. (Bowen 2017)

Adobe construction has been used world wide since pre-historic times to build structural walls and floors, arches, towers, and for Arizona's Anasazi, grain storage facilites mid-way up the walls of the Grand Canyon (200 BC - 1500AD). Adobe structures that are protected from the weather can survive for more than 100 years.

Below: an Anasazi corn storage crib using stone and adobe in the Grand Canyon, photographed by the author in July, 1991.

Anasazi corn crib in the Grand Canyon (C) Daniel Friedman

Composition of Adobe

Adobe reinforced with stone and straw, Pozos, Guanajuato Mexico (C) Daniel FriedmanThe most desirable soil texture for producing the mud of adobe is 15% clay, 10–30% silt, and 55–75% fine sand.

Another source quotes 15–25% clay and the remainder sand and coarser particles up to cobbles 50 to 250 mm (2 to 10 in), with no deleterious effect.

Modern adobe is stabilized with either emulsified asphalt or Portland cement up to 10% by weight.

No more than half the clay content should be expansive clays, with the remainder non-expansive illite or kaolinite.

Too much expansive clay results in uneven drying through the brick, resulting in cracking, while too much kaolinite will make a weak brick.

Typically the soils of the Southwest United States, where such construction has been widely used, are an adequate composition. ] - Wikipedia, retrieved 2018/06/18, original source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe

Below: this adobe house was named for Maria Navarette Cordova whose family acquired the home in 1896. - source: Tucson-Pima County Historical Commission & the Arizona Historical Society.

Traditional adobe buidling in Tucson (C) Daniel Friedman

Types of Damage to Adobe Structures

Deteriorated adobe structure, Pozos, Guanajuato, Mexico (C) Daniel Friedman

Above: remains of a 19th century adobe structure remaining outside of Mineral de Pozos, nee Mineral de San Pedro de los Pozos, a silver mining center in Guanajuato, Mexico.

At its peak, Pozos was populated by silver, copper, zinc, and mercury mine workers and was home to about 80,000 people. 13,000 Pozos miners died in a tragic flood during the Mexican revolution.

Pozos was more-recently a ghost town and currently a small but growing tourist destination. When Europeans arrived at Pozos (wells) in 1576 the area had been settled for centuries by Chichimecas and Huachichiles and their ancestors.

Stucco Failures on Adobe Walls

Deteriorating adobe wall exposed to roof runoff and rain splash-up damage in Jalpan, Queretaro (C) Daniel Friedmandobe structures, roofed and stuccoed, can be very durable, lasting 100 years or longer, and offering considerable advantages including use of inexpensive local materials and the temperature-regulating comfort of thermal mass.

But the adobe durability story changes when there is a roof or wall leak, or where surface runoff or rain splash-up wear the bottom of an adobe wall.

Adobe structures are usually coated on the exterior and interior with a stucco mixture of cement, plaster or similar substances.

Stucco on adobe suffers different problems from stucco systems on framed walls. On adobe, the most common stucco coating failure I see is adhesion loss, usually when rain water penetrates the stucco wall coating.

That may explain the loss of the stucco coating on the adobe wall of the adobe and stone structure in Jalpan, Queretaro, Mexico, shown in our preceding photo.

Below: A traditional adobe structure in Tucson, Arizona in 1990, photo by the author.

La Casa Cordova includes remaining portions of one of the oldest still-standing structures in Tucson, believed to have been built before the Gadsen Purchase in 1854.

Photo below: an antique adobe structural wall with cement stucco coating in Oxaca, Mexico. I first visited this building in Oxaca 1960. I visited it again, finding it in its present condition in 2016.

This is the most common failure I see is stucco-coating adhesion loss, usually when rain water penetrates the stucco wall coating.

Adobe structural wall with stucco coating, Oxaca (C) Daniel Friedman

The adobe building shown below, located in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato,Mexico, is ready for repair and re-painting.

Painted stucco San Miguel de Allende Mexico (C) Daniel Friedman

Unlike the stucco on steel or wood-framed buildings in colder climates, none of the stucco-coated traditional adobe structures I've inspected in several countries has used flashings around windows or doors. Cement stucco is applied directly in one or two coatings to the exterior of the adobe walls.

The paint wear or failure including painting and stucco-coating loss are discussed

at PAINT on STUCCO, FAILURE.

Below: an adobe and concrete-hybrid home constructed in the same city in 1960. This home is described also

at THERMAL MASS in BUILDINGS.

Sun shade reduces solar gain in Mexico (C) Daniel Friedman

Structural Damage & Collapsing Adobe Walls

Below are photographs of antique adobe structures at Jalpan in Queretaro, Mexico.

Jalpan, Queretaro adobe structure (C) Daniel Friedman

Usually on an adobe structure that is not maintained, the roof collapses and disappears first.

Jalpan, Queretaro adobe structure (C) Daniel Friedman

Then, as you see in our detailed photo above, the adobe wall structure, exposed to the weather, begins to collapse.

Below: you can see the remains of roof beam pockets in the top of this adobe wall at el Charco del Ingenio, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico. The protective stucco coating has long fallen away.

Remains of an adobe mud brick wall, el Charco del Ingenio, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico (C) Daniel Friedman

Less often we find severe stuctural damage to an adobe wall, usually where the wall base has been undermined by surface runoff.

Our photo below shows temporary bracing supporting a cracked, leaning adobe structural wall in Pozos, Mexico, an antique silver mining center.

Collapsing adobe wall in Pozos, Mexico (C) Daniel Friedman

Our next photo, below, shows the remains of an 19th century hacienda wall built of adobe at el Charco del Ingenio, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico.

18th century adobe remains, El  Charco del Ingenio, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico (C) Daniel Friedman

Adobe Structure Build, Repair & Preservation Resources

Making adobe bricks, Traditional-Adobe-Construction-Russell Lee, Farm Security Administratin, Library of Congress - at InspectApedia.com

Illustrations above: Traditional Adobe Construction, Russell Lee, Farm Security Administratin, Library of Congress, excerpted from the NPS Preservation brief cited just below.

Making adobe bricks, Traditional-Adobe-Construction-Russell Lee, Farm Security Administratin, Library of Congress - at InspectApedia.com

[Click to enlarge any image]


...

Continue reading at ARCHITECTURE, STYLE, & BUILDING AGE or select a topic from the closely-related articles below, or see the complete ARTICLE INDEX.

Or see these

Recommended Articles

Suggested citation for this web page

ADOBE CONSTRUCTION at InspectApedia.com - online encyclopedia of building & environmental inspection, testing, diagnosis, repair, & problem prevention advice.


Or see this

INDEX to RELATED ARTICLES: ARTICLE INDEX to BUILDING ARCHITECTURE

Or use the SEARCH BOX found below to Ask a Question or Search InspectApedia

Or see

INDEX to RELATED ARTICLES: ARTICLE INDEX to BUILDING DAMAGE, DISASTER, REPAIRS

Or use the SEARCH BOX found below to Ask a Question or Search InspectApedia

Ask a Question or Search InspectApedia

Questions & answers or comments about identifying the age of a building or its components, systems, or materials of construction

Try the search box just below, or if you prefer, post a question or comment in the Comments box below and we will respond promptly.

Search the InspectApedia website

Note: appearance of your Comment below may be delayed: if your comment contains an image, photograph, web link, or text that looks to the software as if it might be a web link, your posting will appear after it has been approved by a moderator. Apologies for the delay.

Only one image can be added per comment but you can post as many comments, and therefore images, as you like.
You will not receive a notification
when a response to your question has been posted.
Please bookmark this page to make it easy for you to check back for our response.
Our Comment Box is provided by Countable Web Productions countable.ca

Comment Form is loading comments...

Citations & References

In addition to any citations in the article above, a full list is available on request.



ADVERTISEMENT