There’s growing interest in living roofs or green roofs. The difficulty is deciding on the waterproof membrane. Rubber pond liner (EPDM) is the most waterproof and durable material, and the most common choice due to proven performance, but it’s also very expensive and made from nasty petro chemicals. I think a number of less toxic, … Read more
It seems many readers are hesitant to plunge in and start building an earthbag house. That’s understandable. Building any home is a major undertaking and it makes sense to plan accordingly. The best advice for those just getting started (after doing the prerequisite background research) is to build something small like a storage shed or … Read more
I recently wrote an article about living walls for GreenHomeBuilding.com, and in doing the research for this I came upon an interesting approach to creating a kind of living wall or retaining wall using geotextile materials. Basically, loosely woven bags filled with a growing medium can be stacked to form walls that then support plant … Read more
In addition to many other uses, earthbags also make great privacy walls. Besides being beautiful, privacy walls help block wind and noise, and keep out stray dogs and prying eyes. You can greatly enhance your home using this dirt cheap building technique. Protected from excess wind, plants can thrive even in harsh climates like New … Read more
Kikuma Watanabe is an associate professor of architecture at Kochi University of Technology in Japan and is responsible for the design of several wonderful earthbag projects around the world. He collaborated with Akio Inoue (a Japanese professor of philosophy) on designing an eco-village near Lake Victoria in Uganda, and they have helped the Africans build … Read more
One of the most practical structures on a small farmstead is a multi-purpose garden structure that can serve as a storage shed or cool pantry above ground, or as a root cellar or storm shelter below ground. You can build this multipurpose structure for about $300 using earthbag construction (bags filled with earth and stacked … Read more