Some people dream of buying a remote getaway as a place to escape to if/when there’s a breakdown in society. Here’s an alternative for those who can’t or don’t want to move and develop a remote site: build an earthbag survival shelter and put a house on top to conceal it. (I’d build with 18″-24″ … Read more
It’s easy to hang or attach things on earthbag walls. Simply embed wood poles or blocks between courses of earthbags as you’re building. Some call these nailers, some call them gringo blocks. I also use rebar a lot to attach things to walls as I’ve explained previously. [Off-topic but interesting point: The website below has … Read more
Roundhouses, especially ones with a lightweight roof, get my vote for the easiest shape to build. This obviously goes against conventional thinking that uses modern materials such as plywood and sheetrock. Sure, there’s a certain degree of efficiency in building rectangular structures with modern materials — they do go up quickly. But the logic falls … Read more
Akio Inoue from Japan has been a long time advocate and pioneer of earthbag building (see http://earthbagbuilding.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/akio-inoue-dome-photos/ for more about him). He created one of the first concise manuals for how to actually go about building, but it has not generally been accessible to the public. Akio wrote to me and asked if I would … Read more
Here’s an update from the Konbit Shelter group who’s finishing their dome in Haiti. Way to go team! Now they’re calling for volunteers to finish a prototype in Pennsylvania (see details below). “Moses, Craig, and myself left Haiti about a week and a half ago. The final week there was so frantic and felt so … Read more
The idea of DIY cast stone houses has proven to be so popular that I’ve started a new blog to facilitate the development of geopolymer housing. It is an open source project to develop geopolymer cast stone construction. The goal is to create an archive of relevant information through an interactive process of sharing ideas … Read more