Dry Stack Wall Construction may be the DIYer's way to create a home with thermal mass.
Apart from Standard CMU, the following are options:
Nexcem (Durisol) in Ontario, Canada (6 hours from our property) Tim Singbeil provides support for Nexcem Technical details on Nexcem are in this PDF
See the below from Earth Song Discovery Farm's page on Dry Stack Concrete Block Construction . The page has detailed instructions for construction. They also have a page with progress construction photos from their eco-greenhouse structure.
"Dry stack" refers to a building technique using concrete blocks with no mortar between them.
The surface on both sides is coated with a special high strength cement creating a "sandwich" construction that is extremely strong, stronger than even the typical mortar joint.
This building technique was developed by the military in the 1950's.
Advantages....
Stronger than conventional block and mortar construction technique.
Easy to stack and build by one or two persons.
Does not require skilled labor.
The filled cores hold daytime heat, keeping room temperature more even at night as heat is radiated back into the house.
Dis-Advantages....
Slight imperfections in blocks sometimes cause gaps or need shims or trimmed to fit.
Precautions need to be taken while building until the cement is poured, as the blocks may move. (We found out the hard way, leaning a ladder against a short section of wall and toppling it over!)
Walls exposed to the wind should never be built very high without either bracing or additional bond beams to lock it together. We would not recommend building more than one story high.
This is hard, labor-intensive work. We estimate we have put into place well over 100,000 pounds of block and cement, all of it mixed in a small cement mixer and placed into the cores with small hand scoops. Only the footers were placed utilizing premixed concrete in trucks.
Sacrete has a blog post on Drystack using their products
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