June 2012 - InMaricopa.com

4m NEWS InMaricopa.com
June 2012
SR 347
PORTER ROAD
WHITE AND PARKER ROAD
Earthly construction
Exterior walls at CAC Maricopa campus built
with rammed earth technology
By Tim Howsare
The buildings and equipment inside will
be on the cutting edge, but the technology
used to build many of the exterior walls at
the Maricopa campus of Central Arizona
College is as ancient as the Great Wall of
China.
After evaluating different materials,
the project team for the new campus at
Bowlin and White and Park roads — across
from the city hall complex also under construction
— decided to implement a building
technology called rammed earth.
SmithGroup of Phoenix is the architect
for the new campus and CORE Construction,
also of Phoenix, is the builder.
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Rammed earth refers to the process of
compacting materials like dirt, sand and
cement with pneumatic compressors to
construct walls not only strong and longlasting,
but with a high level of insulation.
Another reason rammed earth
construction was chosen is because
it reflects the history of the site in
Maricopa, with the Ak-Chin Indian
Community and the Casa Grande Ruins
nearby, according to a video about the
project produced by CORE.
Jessica Steadman, CORE’s director of
marketing, said rammed earth is similar
to adobe, a common construction
technique used by Native Americans
and known to keep interior spaces cool
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Workers from CORE Construction in Phoenix compact earth and cement to form a rammed earth
exterior wall for a building on the CAC Maricopa campus.
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in the desert heat.
“They perform exactly the same
except rammed earth is thicker and
stronger, therefore it is more energy
efficient,” she said. “An adobe building
is a structure built of thousands of small
earth modules. A rammed earth building
is one large module with holes in it for
windows and doors.”
Another advantage of rammed earth
is it is low maintenance and doesn’t need
to be painted.
For the CAC walls, dirt is stabilized
with a 9.4 percent mix of Portland
cement, Steadman said. Harrah’s
Steadman cautions that rammed Ak-Chin earth
is not necessarily a green technology
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because of the energy used to transport
the materials and the equipment needed
to build the walls.
“But it is green in the sense that it
is very energy efficient and it will last
forever,” she said.
She said this is CORE’s first rammed
earth project.
David Snider, District 2 county supervisor,
said rammed earth has merit for
other construction projects in the county
depending on the function and location.
“There are homes built within Pinal
County in the last 20 or 30 years with
rammed earth,” he said. “There are examples
at private residences and a building
at a middle school in Casa Grande.”
The 25-year master plan for the
campus will enable it to accommodate
more than 20,000 students with nearly
720,000 square feet. The first three
buildings, with an expected 2,500 students,
are scheduled to open in January.
A $99 million bond for construction
was approved by voters in 2008.
Although the location is generally
referred to as the Maricopa campus, an
official name has not yet been adopted.
CAC’s three other campus locations are
named after geographic formations relative
to those regions — Aravaipa, Signal
Peak and Superstition Mountain.