“Mamas making up the Ernas Women’s Association have tapped onto a creative initiative to boost their everyday income, at the same time promote tourism development within their area, when they decided to build a house using much cheaper and affordable materials which will be used as a training centre.
Earthbag Building
Affordable Lava Rock Insulation for the Far North
Porous lava rock — scoria (cinders) and pumice — is an ideal building material. We’ve covered this amazing material many times on our blog, but I just learned something very exciting. It turns out scoria is available in Alaska, British Columbia and to some extent the Yukon. All these areas have cinder cones (a type of volcano) that produce scoria. This is great news because porous lightweight lava rock is a good insulator and also fireproof, rot proof, easy to work with and doesn’t attract pests. It’s affordable if there’s a nearby source to minimize shipping costs. So this discovery makes it practical to build lightweight superinsulated earthbag houses in Alaska and Canada. Use the search engine on the right to search this site for details and example projects.
Costa Rica Earthbag Time Lapse
Earthbag House Time-lapse – February/March 2013 from The Yoga Farm on Vimeo.
February/March 2013 This is 6 weeks of work in 2 and a half minutes :)
Plenitud Earthbag Roundhouse Workshop in Puerto Rico
Hello Owen,
My name is Tyler Nesbit. I am a friend and co-worker of Owen Ingley of Plenitud Initiativas Eco-Educativas. Would you please share this call for Earthbag Building Interns on your Natural Building Blog?
Shelters for All Update — One Year Later
It’s been about one year since the Shelters for All $300 House design competition. (Earthbag building was the most popular building method.) Let’s look at the progress made since then. Two videos below show their work in Haiti and India.