One of the easiest and least expensive ways to build lintels over doors and windows is with small diameter wood poles. Poles are typically gathered inexpensively from local forests, sometimes with a firewood permit. In comparison, milled timbers, dimension lumber, and concrete and steel timbers are more expensive than pole lintels. Pole lintels are fast … Read more
David Easton, author of The Rammed Earth House and owner of Rammed Earth Works in California, shares his earth floor building method in Popular Science. Click link below for full article. “My family and I live in a beautiful earth home with a handsome earth floor. It may sound unbelievable, but as a successful builder … Read more
I am pleased to announce that Owen Geiger’s Basic Earthbag Building DVD is finally available for purchase. It has taken more time than expected to complete the production, but it is well worth the wait I think. Owen is a natural teacher who understands how to present information in a clear and understandable way and … Read more
Yesterday’s blog post about a built-in mass heater was popular. Caleb, one of our readers, reminded us of hypocausts – underfloor heating systems — that have been used for centuries. Even if you’ve read about this before, it pays to go back and reread this type of information from time to time. For instance, I … Read more
Paul, one of our readers, left a comment that said “Filling and placing bags [by hand] when you only have a few hundred or a couple of thousand may work best, but if you are creating a large earthbag building that would require thousands of bags or thousands of feet of tubing definitely requires some … Read more
Luke, the reader who’s doing our Facebook fan page, sent me this amazing story. It’s all in Russian and I haven’t translated it yet. They built a mass heater/fireplace into the earthbag wall. The thick earthbag wall is the mass. Rough translation of a few snippets: Earthbag house with a brick oven in the suburbs. … Read more