This is what the mudroom entry looks like today. It is totally enclosed and functional, but there are still some refinements to accomplish, like making steps to the front door. Those doors were a pair of recycled French doors that I got for free. This room is not insulated. The siding is the same rough-sawn … Read more
This large 30′ X 30′ structure rests entirely on a dozen primary concrete piers. All of the lumber is rough-sawn from a local mill out of beetle killed wood. Most of the heavier timbers are Ponderosa pine, 6 X 6 posts and 6 X 10 beams, with 2 X 8 rafters. The beams are pinned … Read more
After finishing the chicken coop described in yesterday’s post it was time to start work on the pantry/root cellar portion of the complex. I hired an excavator to dig out part of the hole and give me a head start on the project. While he was here with the machinery he also leveled an area for the rest of the building, dug an extension of the water line so we would have water next to the chicken coop, and brought in road base for inside the barn.
The Frequently Asked Questions section of www.earthbagbuilding.com has been accumulating pertinent questions and answers for over a decade. These had been categorized into only about a half dozen pages, which had become overly long and cumbersome for finding specific information. I finally decided to organize them in such a way that it is now much … Read more
One of our readers requested information on how to build on sloped terrain. They want to minimize excavation work. The drawing above shows how to build an earthbag foundation in ‘steps’. The basic process involves: 1. determine the slope of the land: change in elevation (‘rise’) over horizontal distance (run), expressed as a fraction (example: … Read more
This is one of the best videos I’ve seen in illustrating how to go about building a project. In just a few short minutes it manages to show the construction process from foundation to roof, using lots of animated portions to speed it up. There are several particularly worthwhile aspects of this 800 square foot … Read more