Sheddie Thomo is featured in edp24.co.uk
A chance to see behind the scenes of 12 eco projects is on offer next month during the annual Norfolk Campaign to Protect England (CPRE) Green Building Open Days.
Environment correspondent TARA GREAVES visits an award winning shed in Potter Heigham to find out more.
To call it a shed seems something of an injustice. With its gently curved front wall and pale green doors and windows – not to mention a modern fitted kitchen inside – it could easily pass for a family home.
But a shed it is, and one with free eco-friendly rammed earth walls – bringing new meaning to the words dirt cheap.
The man behind its construction in Potter Heigham is Michael Thompson, a joiner by trade who stumbled across the method for making a rammed earth structure while watching television.
Michael saw the Build an Eco House in Seven Days programme, which had an internal feature wall built of rammed earth, and fell in love with the idea.
He even invented a contraption known as Sid the Soil Sifter, which has become a big hit on the popular video sharing website Youtube, using a normal drill to power it.
“We had just moved into a new place and the garden was full of rubbish and we couldn’t grow anything so I had already built Sid but when I discovered rammed earth I realised I needed one of these to process the soil,” he said.
Rammed earth is not a new building technique, it dates back to 700BC, but it has seen a revival in recent years because more people want to live sustainably.
