We discuss energy barriers and their relationship to self-correcting quantum memories. We introduce the solid code, a 3-d version of Kitaev's surface code, and then combine several solid codes using a technique called welding. The resulting code is a [[O(L 3 3 )]] stabilizer code with an energy barrier of O(L 2 3 ), which is an exponential improvement over the previous highest energy barrier in 3-d. No-go results are avoided by breaking microscopic translation invariance.