Earthbag building is perfect for constructing storm resistant affordable housing in hurricane and tornado regions. Steve and Carol Escott’s house for instance has been through numerous hurricanes with no serious damage so far.
“When the Mississippi floods, people use earthbags to hold back the water. And when you buy a sack of oats for your horses, it might come in a polypropylene bag—the same kind that they fill with sand or soil and use to direct the flood waters.
Did you know you can build permanent structures with the same bags? In fact, you can get the material they make the bags from in a big roll—it is one long continuous tube at that point! This is before they cut it into smaller pieces and sew it to make bags—and that’s often even easier to use than the bags!
This building technique, which can use a wide variety of soil types, is called Earthbag Building. You can build foundations out of it, retaining walls, square houses, round houses, amoeboid houses, arches, vaults, domes, sculpture, benches, privacy “fences.” The list goes on!”
Would love to see how this house fared Dorian. Too many people give me the side-eye when I tell them how these homes can survive a hurricane… could sure use some pictures to shut them up. :-)
I don’t have any recent photos, but some tests were done of an earthbag wall’s resistance to wind loads that you can view at http://earthbagbuilding.com/pdf/windloadtest.pdf