As you may well know, the recent floods in Pakistan destroyed or damaged 2 million homes, affecting 20 million people. PAKSBAB, an NGO building strawbale houses in Pakistan, uses gravel-filled earthbag foundations to protect their houses from water damage. To date, 22 houses have been built. In addition to providing flood protection, PAKSBAB uses earthbag … Read more
I came across a report titled Earth Building: Models, Technical Aspects, Tests and Environmental Evaluation by Sargentis, Kapsalis and Symeonidis. The report was presented at the 11th International Conference on Environmental Science and Technology in September, 2009 in Greece. The report has a number of fascinating insights. The team designed and analyzed a model earthbag … Read more
Patti Stouter has published another earthbag technical report. It is a summary of the state of testing to date, and also covers some of the codes related to earthbag. The following information is quoted from this report. According to the new international earthen building standards, if earthbag walls with some reinforcing have shear strength equal … Read more
Patti Stouter has expanded and updated her soil testing guide Soil Tests for Earthbag. We’ve added the report to our EarthbagStructures.com and EarthbagBuilding.com websites, where you can find indepth information on every aspect of building with bags. Using the right soil is very important. After all, earthbag building uses soil as the primary building material, … Read more
Do earthbags really become hard as rock or is this exaggeration? I did a little experiment on the roundhouse we’re currently building to find out. The answer depends primarily on the choice of fill material and the degree of compaction. The moisture content and curing process also play a role. We used road base – … Read more
Ever since the earthquake in Haiti we have been inundated with requests for information about using earthbags for reconstruction efforts. Owen Geiger and I have joined with Patti Stouter to assemble a coherent response to this need that is based on our understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of earthbag building, coupled with some knowledge … Read more