The World's Oldest Building Material

Unlike nostalgia shops and hipster mustaches, the world’s oldest building material, compressed earth, is vintage, efficient, and cost effective. Alterinvest just used the technique in San Antonio.

Owner David Komet (snapped on site at 14-unit 3050 Eisenhauer) tells us compressed earthen construction is similar to the adobe techniques originally used to build San Antonio. But he's not just being retro—properties built this way have high thermal mass requiring less energy, are quiet for residents (there’s 12 inches of compressed earth between them), are nearly unburnable and bug-free, and are market competitive to construct. (As they say, good earth makes good neighbors, and good neighbors make good pies to share with good reporters.) David lives and works in a high-thermal-mass historic firehouse and tells us temperature changes are very minimal, so he uses less HVAC and needs fewer ceiling ducts.

So why isn't everyone building this way? David tells us it's not easy to do, especially since it's so rare in the US. He had to develop some technology for the property, and the City of San Antonio hadn't worked on such a project before. The biggest struggles were with navigating the code and fire safety (fire will burn you, but paperwork will bury you alive)—although the materials essentially cannot burn, the City requested a fire rating test for the walls and required commercial-grade sprinklers. Alternivest is developing a compressed earth building in New Braunfels, Texas, designed for seniors and David's always working to improve the technique—next on his list: vaulted ceilings.