“It was another great weather weekend up in WY. I got up around 2PM on Saturday and started working on stabilizing the walls with an earthbag process. Instead of buying the polypropylene or burlap bags, a landscaping supplier Weedbarrier.com sold me a woven landscaping cloth. 15′ X 360′ of it as a matter of fact -figuring this will get me further than buying 1000 earth/sand bags at a time. So far, the process is working out well. I’m mixing approximately (5-5-1) 5 shovels full of dirt, 5 – gravel and 1 – portland cement. Once it’s all mixed (dry), you shovel it into the cloth (of varying lengths) and fold it over. From here, you flip the open side over, facing the ground – wet it down, place and shape it, then tamp it down to set it.
This is my journal that will track my progress in building a natural earth home. There will be walls made from earthbags, adobe and rammed earth…”
Read more about this and other low cost projects at Wyoming Dreams Rammed Earth Home
This method would work great where bags are unavailable or overpriced. I’d like to see a short video clip that demonstrates this process. (A picture or video is worth a thousand words.)
Genius :)
We get numerous emails about where to find appropriate sized bags (got one today). This technique would bypass the need for bags and probably be less expensive (prices keep going up). Plaster should readily adhere to the mesh. More experimentation is needed.