We always enjoy hearing about reader’s projects. A reader just sent me photos of their earthbag tornado shelter in Ohio. We’ve been encouraging earthbag storm shelters since the beginning of this blog, because they’re low cost, efficient, simple to build and can save lives. The links below explain in detail how they’re built.
“I wanted to show you a picture of the work in progress. It took us two summers to build by the way, we had lots of interruptions. We just made sure it was well covered when we weren’t working on it, and well secured for the winter that it didn’t have stucco on it and we didn’t have any problems doing it this way. We live in Southern Ohio so we will have to be very attentive at repairing any cracks due to the weather. We have one already that needs fixed. With the air flow inside the shelter and stucco on the outside hopefully it will dry out quickly if any moisture gets between the stucco and the bags. We will see how it goes.
I wanted to show you the finished shelter although it still requires landscaping. You can see the turbine vent on the top. I wanted to show you the PVC vents we installed for air. They work great by the way, it is not musty or damp inside. My concern was if there were a lot of people inside we would run out of air. With the air vents that is not a problem. On hindsight I would have placed the vents differently because I didn’t realize at the time that during a storm you can see outside through them. I failed to place one so we could see our house.”
Step-by-Step Earthbag Building
How to Build an Earthbag Dome