Building with earth requires low energy input in processing and handling soil – only about 1% of the energy required to manufacture and process the same volume of cement concrete. This aspect was investigated by the Desert Architecture Unit which has discovered that the energy needed to manufacture and process one cubic metre of soil … Read more
Here’s an interesting video by Konbit Shelter showing how they make a cement stabilized soil mixture with a hand-operated mixer. Konbit Shelter home page Video credit: Sucka Pants
Pisco Sin Fronteras in Pisco, Peru has been working with earthbags for some time and their last project, just completed, is a community center. They have detailed how they went about building this at their website and we have assembled this information on a project page about it at www.earthbagbuilding.com. You can also see a … Read more
We have a guest post today by Owen Ingley of Plenitud Iniciativas, who has been experimenting with fibers in plaster. “Greetings from Puerto Rico. I just wanted to give you a quick update on something that we’ve tried recently. The last emails we sent to each other I was asking you about fibers for plasters … Read more
While Owen and I often point out the problems associated with dealing with codes and the officials who administer them, the flip side of this is that establishing a good relationship with the building authorities can make projects possible that would otherwise be denied. Building codes do generally allow alternatives to the common methods of … Read more
Here’s a response I made to a reader over on the Mother Earth News Blog who said “This type of building for people is not going to readily take off.” Owen: It’s all a matter of perspective, because over 1/3 (some estimate ½) of the houses in the world fall into this category! This includes … Read more