“This past month 34 high school students volunteered to build a house for women at Her Farm. Previously, one volunteer from Colorado had spent two weeks putting in the foundation for the first “earthbag” house to be built in this part of Nepal. The students then spent one week and were able to finish 50% + of the house. Consisting of 4 rooms, each one 18ft by 18ft, it’s a large structure that involved hundreds of hours of labor to complete. Earthbag housing is built using rice bags which are filled with dirt, stacked as you would bricks or cement blocks with barbed wire acting as mortar, then compacted with a heavy tamper. A steel and concrete ring beam around the top of the entire structure ties all the walls together for strength. It’s an environmentally great way to build and provides a home that is also free from chemicals. We finished our earthbag house off with mud plaster and a metal roof. We’ve just to finish the floors inside the rooms and it will be ready for occupancy.”
