The Demo Site

Does anyone have any experience or knowledge about using
caliche as a home building material?

I've seen and heard remarks about building with caliche in
the past, but I tend to dismiss and forget about it rather
quickly.

Just now I was doing some web searches and came across
references to caliche blocks again.

We have plenty of caliche in the area.

One thing that I found particularly intriguing was the use
of caliche as a floor material.

Pouring a cement slab of any size can be relatively
expensive. I'm curious about how well caliche blocks
stabilized by cement would work as a flooring material.

Would it be less expensive to build a foundation around the
perimiter and use caliche blocks inside the foundation
instead of a slab.

Does anyone know how caliche blocks compare to compressed
earth blocks for strength?

How do you build caliche blocks? With a compressed earth
block machine? Or are there special equipment for it?

For what it's worth, I'm still planning on compress earth
blocks for the walls, but I'm willing to consider caliche
blocks for the floor.

answers: 

When I was a boy, my native Denmark was still a poor country and building still proceeded according to ancient custom in many cases, i.e the materials were those found locally. Caliche is not found very much in Denmark since Denmark is rather wet. Where it does occur, an on the western moors, we call it "hardpan".  Limestone is quite common tho, the Danish version having geological origins quite different from those of caliche.  However, having progressed beyond the half-timber ("post and beam" to us) stage of construction using wattle with limestone daub for infill, buildings were mostly brick made from the native ubiquitous clay, that is to say, it was the Danish version of caliche taken one step further by firing or "burning" the blocks of clay.  The need for firing arose, of course, from the fact that Denmark is a rainy land. 
 
Floors in the poorest of dwellings and in utilitarian buildings were often exactly what you propose: Stabilized clay.  The clay was stabilized with lime rather than cement because cement was very expensive and, of course, the technique predates the advent of cement by many hundreds of years.  There was no need to use brick because floors are not subjected to rain.  Clay floors lasted literally for hundreds of years.
 
I think however, that our generation needs to cast overboard the notion that things must be "maintenace free".  To me the attraction of these ancient building techniques is that they can be performed by simple men with simple tools — they permit you to seize the means of production :-) — and the maintenance is both simple and satisfying.  I have lived in houses built by these methods, and with roofs thatched with rye straw, that were over four hundred years old, so if your concern is durability, I don't think you have much to worry about provided you accept that maintenance if part of life's routine.
 
Clay floors are fine in utilitarian buildings or even rooms within the principal dwelling, but they are not comfortable to live on.  In consequence the custom was, and in my opinion should be, that in the "good rooms" including the kitchen, the clay floor was overlain by a plank floor. Clay and wood do not like each other a whole lot, however.  There are therefore quite specific techniques that should be implemented in the laying of the plank floor so the two down end up in a rip snorting argument that will destroy the wooden floor.