“Another good type of floor would probably be that suggested in The Spectator, viz. road material laid down and tarred in the same manner as roads are now made in many places.
“A number of rooms and houses have been erected on the Globe and Phœnix Mine on much the same principle as Pisé de terre buildings, but the system developed there is different as regards the mixture, which consists of two parts ant-heap or ordinary dagga which must not be too sandy, and three parts ashes or clinker sieved free from fine dust.
“A very full description of the method employed on this mine was forwarded by the courtesy of the Manager to the Committee, and it is interesting to note from this that the walls are made waterproof by first making them smooth with dagga plaster, then, when quite dry, giving one good coat of boiling hot tar. A coat of limewash is applied three days later. That this is effective is well evidenced by the fact that the buildings erected have successfully withstood our last abnormally heavy rainy season.
“The Globe and Phœnix system is the result of a number of experiments carried out on that mine. Their mixture, which is stated to be ant-proof, contains more moisture than Pisé de terre, and each course is reinforced with old wire rope, or other suitable scrap. The material is left in a heap for one or two days before being used.
“Circular huts have been built on the mine of the same material, the forms being made of two rings of corrugated iron in three or more sections joined up with cleats at the end laps and held in position with cross bolts and distance pieces. The inner ring is 9 in. less radius than the outer one.”
Pisé Buildings for Settlers
Extracts from a paper on Pisé in the “Farmers’ Handbook,” issued by the Department of Agriculture, New South Wales, 1911
“Pisé is a material readily obtainable by the settler, of which cheap and durable buildings can be easily and substantially erected.
“For the construction of pastoral or agricultural buildings, especially in districts remote from railways, or from towns in which other building materials are cheap or easily procurable, pisé is particularly well adapted. In the country earth is plentiful and readily obtainable; in the city or town such is not the case, and this fact, combined with the very bulky nature of the material, prohibits its use in such centres of population.
“To the selector or settler, who, like many of our successful pioneers, is not burdened with a superfluity of hard cash, but who possesses an abundant capital of energy, combined with a certain amount of handiness, pisé has an additional advantage (which it shares with slabs, wattle and daub, etc.) over most other building materials, in that it affords him an opportunity of erecting his homesteading largely as the result of his own labour.