Builders Without Borders assisted with creating this Earthbag Foundation for the first strawbale house in Haiti. Many of the bags were sewn from slavaged tarps, the bales were compressed by hand from local rice straw, the roof trusses were partially built from used wooden pallets, and the floor and plaster is earthen.
That is really neat! We have a group from our church leaving in a couple weeks. (2nd trip)
Please keep us posted. Take lots of photos and notes so we can share your experience with others.
Awesome to see this has been built! With so much to rebuild there and not a lot of money to work with, it needs to be seismic resistant and not utilize tons and tons of imported building supplies. This is such a great example of using the materials at hand!
I wonder why they didn’t use recycled rice bags.
I wanted to know that! And if tarps offer the same qualities as recycled rice bags. And I was curious about the straw compacted by hand – is that feasible? I mean, obviously they did it but doesn’t it compromise the strength of the walls?
Tightly compressed straw bales are plenty strong enough for walls. Compressing by hand is slow, but they have lots of people that need jobs.
But bales are vulnerable to moisture damage in rainy climates. I’ve heard there are two weather patterns in Haiti– rain and more rain. So you have to be extra careful the bales never get wet.