I find it very heartening to notice that several earthbag dwellings have been approved by building authorities recently.
The most recent one is located near Berea, Kentucky, and is profiled as the Kentucky Dome Home on our website. This house was designed by John Capillo, the owner, and was built with the assistance of HomeGrown HideAways, a local natural building school. His design has a 16 foot dome with a larger circle coming off the dome that has a wooden roof, as pictured above. According to Jeff Bousquet, one of the workshop participants, “The code officials were incredibly open to new things and gave John his permit without hassle.”
Other recently permitted earthbag projects include a Hawaiian Dome Home, and the Joshua Tree Home in the Arizona desert. Both of these projects employed modified plans designed by earthbag architect Nader Khalili, of CalEarth, who has himself has gotten code approval for various projects near Hesperia, California. You can see more about his projects and the testing that was done to gain approval on our website.
When approaching building authorities it obviously helps to use plans designed by a world-renowned architect who has already completed code approved structures. Each time a new project gets approved it adds to the arsenal of data that all of us can use to validate future projects.
Hello –
The name is Tim and I’m interested in finding out if there are any earth bag building contractors located in the Middlesbrough, KY , area. I’ll need a builder due to the fact I am disabled. If you know of any, please contact me.
Respectfully,
Tim
If you look at http://www.earthbagbuilding.com/projects/kentucky.htm the builder’s contact information is at the end of the article. And there is another possible lead at https://naturalbuildingblog.siterubix.com/no-building-codes-rockcastle-county-kentucky/
Good luck with this.
We are in Berra my now looking to view the earth bag home that is built here. Can anyone give me the actual location. We have stopped and asked and no one knows of it’s l
You might try to Google the owner to see if you can find any contact information.
Actually it took six months of visiting the building code office, several sets of plans and supporting documents, and a waiver that said emergency personnel didn’t have to enter the building, before the permit was issued.
That’s ridiculous. Sorry they gave you such a hard time. Maybe send them links to stories of how earthbag buildings were the some of the only buildings left standing in the worst hit earthquake areas of Nepal. Now earthbag is code approved there and hundreds of buildings have been completed. They have enthusiastic support from the highest level of the engineer’s association! I know because I spoke to them. They even helped us get code approval from the government. So my conclusion is many American engineers are uninformed. They probably see it is a niche building method that’s not worth their time investigating, but that doesn’t mean it’s not safe.