What is the lifespan of poly bags, and will they make durable foundations? From our experience and from what we can gather from other sources, poly bags can last almost indefinitely if kept out of sunlight, and therefore double-bagged foundations appear to be extremely durable. This is important because earthbag foundations are much lower cost … Read more
Julien Balmer’s Freeform House at Phangan Earthworks in Koh Phangan, Thailand has been chosen as the cover shot for my upcoming earthbag book. Long time readers may remember Koh Phangan as one of last year’s earthbag workshops. Hubert Huot and Julien have built some of the most amazing earthbag structures to date and I am … Read more
Due to the enormous popularity of my first earthbag instructable, I’ve added a new one about building roundhouses. This is the most comprehensive earthbag roundhouse information published anywhere on the Internet, with step-by-step directions and lots of photos. “We built this earthbag roundhouse in 2010 as part of an earthbag workshop in Thailand, and finished … Read more
Dr. Sunny Cai, an architect and Associate Professor at the University of Science and Technology in Beijing sent me news of his most recent earthbag work. It’s interesting to note his Ph.D. is in Historic Chinese Earth Architecture. “To be a designer and professor in university for architectural class teaching, I always advocate low carbon … Read more
In addition to our focus on earthbag building, occasionally we cover related sustainable building topics. For instance, if you’re going to live lightly on the land in your earthbag home, you’ll want to produce your own healthy food. Today’s post about how to build low cost, durable garden beds is from the Instructables.com website. Most … Read more
What’s the difference between a cool pantry and root cellar? Humidity. Root cellars are very practical for storing certain types of produce, and have been a key part of sustainable households for centuries. Root cellars are kept fairly moist in order to best preserve the crops that are stored there. However, the high humidity limits … Read more