“How to build a homemade air conditioner / evaporative cooler. I made this cooling system to save money on my summer electric bill. I used some wood scraps, a pond pump, some evaporative cooler pad, and a box fan to make a working swamp cooler air conditioning unit. It can achieve indoor temperatures that are 20+ degrees lower than outside temps.”
Owen Geiger
Rebuilding Nepal, One Earthbag at a Time
Rebuilding Nepal, One Earthbag at a Time is a short Kindle book assembled by a team of eight volunteers who went to Palchok in the Trishuli Valley to rebuild a school in the fall of 2015. Because of the remote location they needed to plan for every aspect of the project, and this book is primarily advice for others who might try to do something similar. Besides actually building the school, they wanted to introduce the earthbag technique to the villagers so they could continue rebuilding this way. The team had raised enough funds from friends and family to accomplish this goal. They were there for only two weeks, but they got that small school built! Graeme Howell was the mastermind behind this endeavor.
The first chapter introduces what they consider to be the essential building process and suggests how to make this happen efficiently. Because of the number of volunteers, including folks from the village, they wanted to keep everybody busy and make sure there weren’t bottlenecks in the process. For this reason they had people filling and sewing bags right away, even before the foundation trench was prepared. Likewise, they had people screening soil for the eventual plaster.
Cowboy Builders in Nepal
The importance of using trained engineers, architects and supervisors can’t be emphasized enough. Due to a lack of trained builders, a few dangerous earthbag projects have been built in Nepal by what I call ‘cowboy builders’ – those with little or no training or building experience. We heard of a school in Mazel in Ghorka that was described as “the worst earthbag building in Nepal”. It has bamboo pins eaten by insects instead of steel rebar, two large 8’x8’ windows set 3’ apart, and dry soil fill consisting of 100% silt which has no binding strength. Proper earthbags are made with moist subsoil containing clay and aggregates, and then tamped solid to create ‘rammed earth in bags’.
New Earthbag Projects in Nepal by First Steps Himalaya
First Steps Himalaya, a New Zealand based NGO, is doing an excellent job on the six-classroom school in Sindhupalchok, Nepal. There was a Spanish documentary film crew on site that interviewed me and asked for my impression of the school. I described the school “as strong as an army bunker. The massive earthbag walls could withstand grenades, rifle bullets and even a crash from a speeding vehicle”. The quality of construction is on par with Good Earth Nepal that organized my trip.
Secret of Terra Preta Soil Discovered?
We’ve discussed the basics of terra preta soil – the most fertile soil in the world – in two previous blog posts. As I explained in the earlier blog posts, scientists are racing to unlock the secrets of terra preta soil and the role that biochar plays. New biochar research is coming out that may hold the keys to restoring land degraded from years of industrial chemical farming. If the claims made in the following videos turn out to be true then that means we now know how to develop permanent soil fertility. In addition, you can heat your home and greenhouse from waste heat given off during the biochar making process. This BBC documentary — The Secret Of Eldorado – TERRA PRETA — explains why terra preta is more valuable than gold. Test trials have shown terra preta can produce 880% increase in plant yields.
Hyperadobe Quick Wall Machine
Thanks to Jaime Marin for this excellent find. This video shows how to build and use a handmade tube filler to make hyperadobe (raschel mesh) earthbag walls. The machine holds the funnel in place to help fill the tube and then rolls backwards down the wall. Note how they’re not using barbed wire because they’re using mesh, and the project is probably not in an earthquake zone. By the way, always use barbed wire on domes.