I came across an interesting article at www.bbc.com that outlines several intriguing alternatives to materials that have toxic consequences. “Stone wool” comes from igneous rock and slag which are melted together and spun into fibers. Unlike fiberglass insulation, or foamed plastic, stone wool can be engineered to be fire resilient, provide good insulation, be water … Read more
It took me about seven years and much head-scratching to complete this central feature of our earthbag house house. Some of the elements were in place for years, such as the large plastic stock watering tank that would serve as the tub. We still fondly remember climbing into a variety of such stock tanks at … Read more
The current issue of Mother Earth News has this article written by Kyle Chandler-Isacksen with Conrad Rogue; photos by House Alive. What is shown here are excerpts; you can read the entire article at the above link. Balecob is an infill technique that uses straw bales and cob to quickly create highly insulating, roof-supporting, and … Read more
In 2018 Builders Without Borders and the Kevin Rohan Memorial Eco Foundation built the first straw bale house in Nepal. They collected loose straw and compacted it into bales using a steel mold and a farm jack.The bales were placed on a cemented stone foundation.Then the bales were held in place with external bamboo pins.A … Read more
This is the first time I have seen the use of earthen and natural insulation materials for 3D printing projects. As you can see from the video, the walls are not actually load bearing, since they rely on timber framing for that. In September, WASP, or the World’s Advanced Saving Project, debuted its new Crane … Read more
Reader Morgan, from the Sustainable Life School, just uploaded this video of a very brief history of earthbag building. I might add that missing from this history is the role that Gernot Minke at Kassel Polytechnic College in Germany played. In 1976 he began to investigate the question of how natural building materials like sand … Read more