“In April 2011, Casa de Tierra broke ground for a guest house on client Melanie Hamilton’s land in San Juan del Sur. Melanie has visited Nicaragua many times over the past decade, and was ready to lay down roots, and build an ecologically-friendly home. Together with Melanie, we chose to implement a rubble trench foundation with a conventional grade beam, earthbag walls, thin earthen partition walls, an interior composting toilet system, and a rancho roof constructed with wood posts and beams and finished with cane poles on the interior and laminate tile on the exterior. Her home is a work in progress, and we anticipate finishing it with natural plasters, milk-based paints, and an earthen and stone floor.”
Read more at the source: Casa de Tierra
Note: La Casa de Tierra, the earthbag house in Costa Rica that’s profiled at Earthbag Building.com
not a chance owen. a very misleading statement. you might be able to get the walls up for $2-3000 including nicaraguan labour, but not including plaster. the roof alone is over $5000. the cost is closer to $20,000. i know, as i build super adobe homes and i happen to own this property.
You’ll notice I said “homes like this”, not this particular house. That’s materials only. Our blog, websites, videos, etc. describe hundreds of ways to cut costs. That’s my passion in life — building super low cost houses, and that’s what I do practically all day long. So sure, you could use expensive tile, carvings, custom fixtures, etc. and raise the cost.
Update: Here’s a quick example of what I’m talking about. A person could use soil and wood poles from the site, recycled bags, earthen floor and plaster and cut the cost by thousands. Would it be as nice as a $20,000 house? No, but it would provide decent, safe shelter. That’s my point. I’m definitely not criticizing what you spent. That house is super beautiful. Great job. But our blog is all about affordable housing and so I can’t let a comment like that go past unchallenged. Hope you’re not offended.
So how much did you pay to have this built?
Bachelor pad.
Very nice. This looks like something I’d build for myself. Small, simple, low cost, practical, easy to build. Little houses like this only cost around $2,000-$3,000. Add on later if you want.