Adobe house floors can be free or cheap and options include dirt or concrete with bottle bottoms, “beach” glass, complete bottles, wood discs, bottle caps, coins, tile, glass, construction paper, and colorful chips. Cover floors with clear epoxy for a strong and beautiful finish.
Concrete
This is the most common, but it is also the ugliest, most expensive, and hardest on the environment. You can money by making the concrete yourself and with some creative thinking and DIY including:
- Rebar: Using bamboo or other lumber or scrap metal from the dump (hello bed frames) for rebar. Use salvaged string or wire rather than purchasing rebar wire.
And don’t bother with rebar or mesh chairs that hold them off the floor while you pour the concrete.
Simply pull the rebar up into place as you pour concrete. - Concrete Materials: You can save money on aggregate (gravel) by using what you have around the house.
Substitutes include crushed glass bottles, fireplace ash, bottle caps, marbles, small river or beach rock, crushed clay products, nails (now I know what to do with my milk crate full of 5” galvanized nails!), and whatever else you can think of.
Gravel is not too expensive if you buy a dump truck load for about $300, but if you have a small floor then the cost is about the same for a small load. So this will save money and is more environmentally friendly while cleaning up some of the crap around your house. - Sand: This is the same as gravel as a small load costs almost as much as a large load unless you have a “little loads” company nearby. Even then the cost is at least double what it should cost.
So pack up the kiddos and head to the beach and bring some 5-gallon buckets and a shovel. Check local laws about “borrowing” sand from the beach.
If you don’t have a beach then check out local lakes and rivers as many will have sections of sandy banks.
I am fortunate here in Thailand as next to the farm is a river and a large sand deposit under a thin layer of grass and soil. All the free sand I need.
Decorative Concrete
You can hire a company to create amazing designs and finishes to make dazzling floors. Or you can also do it yourself:
- Purchase epoxy concrete floor finishing kits from the local hardware store. A friend of mine does this for a living and there is a huge selection of options for materials you can choose from.
- You can add a personal touch with free items from around the house as you will see later in the article.
Dirt
It is amazing how beautiful and durable dirt floors can be. Maintenance is easy too, just wipe with linseed oil or cover with a transparent epoxy and show it off to your family and friends. It is also easy to get creative with many items also listed below.
Learn through my articles how to make adobe bricks water proof here and advantages and disadvantages, can you paint them, and 10 best anchors for a strong house.
You can watch a good how-to video below.
You can also finish it with a “paper bag” floor, multi-color construction paper to make beautiful designs. It is simple to do and you can see an example of it in the video below.
Tile
You can install tile over many types of floors including dirt, so you can choose tiles from an almost unlimited selection of types, sizes, colors, and patterns.
To save money you can purchase overstock from local charity repurpose stores, or you can contact contractors to locate old tiles that are going to the dump. You can get these for free and
Stone: You can purchase stone and slate to embed in the dirt or you can do it on the cheap by gathering river bed or beach rocks. For more of a beach rock theme considers laying beach glass throughout the rock floor.
I installed slate in the adobe toilet buildings and I got these for free from the Brother-in-law after he finished his western style house (while I build my eastern style house lol).
I embedded the slate in concrete over a concrete slab since it is a toilet and shower building.
I am taking a chance as it is with the adobe bricks installed directly on the concrete slab without a curb to protect against water damage.
Bottles: simply pop of cut the bottoms of bottles and install them the dirt, level with dirt, and cover it all in an epoxy. You can get create and use different color bottles for funky designs.
Bottle Caps: I have a large beer bottle cap collection growing, potentially for the earthbag house floor.
Wood Disks: Log cut-offs of various sizes. The small ones fit in between the large ones and make for a beautiful floor that will be the conversation piece of your adobe house.
Coins
This is another cool project that will require a LOT of coins, so pennies are the cheapest option. But you can create patterns with the occasional silver coin and you can even embed paper money and cover with clear epoxy.
Check out the penny floor in this video.
Bottle Floor
I build a base floor with 620ml beer bottles laying on a bed of sand and covered with a concrete slab (for insulation), but I have not yet tried this option.
For these options you have to stand the bottle on their neck and hold them in place by packing them into adobe mud.
They can be packed tight or separated by any distance your creative mind thinks looks the best. Obviously you will need to start with a strong and level base to help hold the bottles in place. And the bottles will raise the height of the floor so this must be factored into your design.
Hmmm, I dug dirt from my earthbag house floor to use the earth to cover the earthbag walls on the interior. So my floor is much lower than the first row of bags so I have lots of room for this floor system. I will think about using this method when I get back to working on the house.
Glass Bottle Bottoms
Bottle bottoms that you cut from beer or wine bottles leaving about a 1” bottom disk to insert into the concrete or earth floor. I don’t recommend the wine bottles with the extreme indent in the bottom as it is hard to clean the floor if there are 1” divots for dirt to hide.
One incredible way to remove the bottle bottoms without any tools or cutting is shown in the video below. You want to check it out!
“Beach” Glass
It would be awesome if one could find enough beach glass for this method, but I don’t see that happening. But there is a way to make glass look like it was weathered by the ocean.
- Break up some different color bottles until most pieces are the size of beach glass.
- Rent a concrete mixer.
- Buy a bag of playground sand or similar at the local hardware store or landscape center.
- Toss in the broken glass and sand and let the mixer do its thing for a few hours.
Then you can embed the glass to the top of the dirt floor and cover with clear epoxy.
Indoor and Outdoor Carpet
This is cheap and fast and can be a temporary floor finish or a permanent solution. I am not a fan of this option, I mean really??? You spent a lot of effort to create an earth floor and you are going to cover it with carpet? Shame.
If you are foolish enough to do this then in the below video you can see how to glue the carpet down and join carpet together if you have rooms over 12′ wide.
If you want to build and Adobe house and want to know how many bricks you will need check out my table of bricks per square feet of house here.
