Looking for new building materials, there has been increasing attention to the
environmental impacts generated and ways to reduce them. In this search, the use of
stabilized soil, one of the first construction materials used by humans but fell out of use
due to the evolution of other technologies, has been reconsidered. This study
examines the financial feasibility of using modular soil-cement bricks, comparing this
construction technique with a traditionally used technique using ceramic masonry,
pointing out the advantages and disadvantages of each. For this comparison, budgets
were prepared for a low-cost house using each construction methodology, aiming to
establish a parallel between the construction costs and the structural safety provided
by each. The results obtained show that there is financial viability for the production
and use of soil-cement bricks in the current construction industry, since the
construction costs using this method were very close to those using the traditional
method with ceramic masonry, even with the low availability and high cost of soilcement
masonry.
