Posted in Economics, Introduction, tagged affordable housing, earthbag, earthbag houses, eco friendly, natural building on January 31, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
There are dozens of building methods and design techniques that enable virtually anyone to build their dream home at rock-bottom prices. The solution lies in natural building – using locally available, low-impact materials such as earth, stone, straw and small diameter wood, in conjunction with timeless vernacular building methods.
Our grandparents didn’t need a quarter million [...]
Posted in Domes, Introduction, tagged Angel's dome, earthbag, earthbag dome, Mexico on January 29, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
We’ve added another project to our Projects page: Angel’s Dome in Mexico.
A lot can be learned by examining other projects. There are many ways to do things and people are constantly innovating. On this project you’ll observe how they used volcanic rock, built eyebrows over their windows with rebar and utilized barrels for window forms. [...]
Posted in Bag Material, Building Styles, Domes, Economics, Filling Bags, Insulation, Introduction, climate, tagged cold climate, earthbag, earthbag homes, insulated earth houses, insulated earthbags, superinsulated earthbag, tube sandbags on January 26, 2009 | 2 Comments »
My earlier post about Earthbag Building in Cold Climates on January 17, 2009 piqued some interest. Since energy performance on most buildings can be improved with insulation, including those made of earth — adobe, earthbag, etc. — I decided to pursue this idea further.
So here’s another method for insulating earthbag buildings using tube sandbags, also [...]
Posted in Building Styles, Domes, Introduction, tagged earthbag, earthbag domes, green roofs, living roofs on January 25, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Green roofs or living roofs have a number of advantages over conventional roofs. In addition to being beautiful, green roofs reduce runoff problems, provide habitat for wildlife, buffer noise, filter the air and reduce the ‘heat island effect’ in cities. They also improve the energy efficiency of buildings, reducing heating and cooling costs.
All these benefits [...]
Posted in Building Styles, Domes, Economics, Emergency Shelter on January 22, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Owen Geiger built an earthbag dome with a green roof for Mother Earth News magazine that is scheduled for the August/September 2009 issue. It is a multi-purpose storm/rootcellar and storage shed.
www.motherearthnews.com
A picture of the dome was submitted in a green roof competition at Huffington Post. It is moving up the charts and is currently ranked [...]
Posted in Economics, Introduction, tagged affordable housing, earthbag, natural building, sustainable building on January 21, 2009 | 2 Comments »
There needs to be much more focus on sustainable housing solutions that benefit average people. According to the UN, approximately 1.2 billion people lack adequate shelter. The main problem is lack of affordable housing.
Natural building can play a major role in addressing the current unprecedented housing crisis. Everyone can have safe, decent, debt-free housing by [...]
Posted in Building Styles, Domes, Introduction, tagged dome, earthbag, earthbag domes, eco-dome, orphanage on January 18, 2009 | 4 Comments »
In my opinion, this project ranks as one of the top in the world not just for its sheer size (over 40 earthbag domes) but also for its leading role in demonstrating how earthbag building can provide affordable housing to those in need (in this case homeless children in Nepal).
The Pegasus Children’s Project includes an [...]
Posted in Building Styles, Domes, Economics, Emergency Shelter, Foundations, Introduction, climate, history, tools on January 17, 2009 | 2 Comments »
We have added a new feature to www.earthbagbuilding.com: videos!
Once we realized how many really informative and entertaining short video programs can be viewed through YouTube.com, we did a thorough scouring of related titles to select only the best for our website. While there are some videos that are merely promotional in nature, or are so [...]
Posted in Bag Material, Building Styles, Filling Bags, Insulation, Introduction, climate, tagged cold climate, earthbags, insulated earthbag walls on January 17, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Most earth structures such as adobe are located in hot, dry climates. But what if you live in a cold climate and want the benefits of low-cost earth building techniques? Earthbag building has the unique advantage of providing either thermal mass or insulation, and therefore can be adapted for cold climates with an insulated fill [...]
Posted in Domes, Economics, Introduction, tagged affordable housing, DIY, earthbags, sandbags, sustainable housing on January 12, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Earthbag building (also called sandbag building) is surely one of the lowest cost, most practical building methods. First used by the military for building durable, bullet and blast resistant structures, this building method has recently experienced a surge of interest among do-it-yourself builders. There are now an estimated 1,000 to 1,500 earthbag structures, including homes, [...]
