Economics

Making Cast Stone Earthbags with Sodium Carbonate

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I consider yesterday’s blog post about making cast stone earthbags one of the most exciting developments in earthbag building. This newer, simpler geopolymer process sure seems like it will become popular. It sounds like a million dollar idea to me. I imagine millions of people would love to live in an all natural, affordable stone … Read more

Earthbag Building May be Thousands of Years Old

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Major Breaking News. Tim, one of our readers, sent me some information the other day that explained how Bill McNulty has patented the process of making cast stone using natron salt (sodium carbonate) mixed with powdered granite, limestone, basalt, schist or sandstone mixed with water. This is a slightly different method than proposed by Professor … Read more

Integrating Shelter, Food, Water and Sense of Place

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The $300 House design competition has about 300 affordable housing projects to study and learn from. I found Kevin Songer’s Integrated Shelter project, and even though it’s borderline genius, it’s way down the list. He entered the contest shortly before the deadline and so most people haven’t seen it. Quick summary and then I’ll let … Read more

Can-Do Attitude Needed Part 1

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Our family goes about life doing what needs to be done and things generally work out okay. There are ongoing challenges, of course, but we just deal with things as they come. In other words, we have a good life based on a can-do attitude and successfully learning how to deal with things. Seems simple … Read more

Suppliers of Misprinted Bags

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I think it would be a great idea to start a list of suppliers who sell misprinted bags. Suppliers sometimes sell otherwise perfectly good bags at a discount when the printing quality is not acceptable. Most people use 18”x30” bags, so that would be the best size to locate. Please leave a comment below with … Read more

Very Good Earthbag Walls

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There’s a wide range of earthbag building systems and some are obviously better than others. Let’s summarize the leading V.G.E.W. contenders. Links are included to make it easier to research the details. – Eternally Solar’s earthbag walls filled with sand. Engineering tests show they exceed building code requirements – Eternally Solar’s earthbags can be filled … Read more