Earthbag Building Blog 3rd Anniversary

This week is the 3rd anniversary of Earthbag Building Blog. A lot has happened this past year, and our blog continues to grow in content and readership. There are now 335 posts and well over 1,000 comments. Thanks for your support. We love hearing about your earthbag projects and hope you will continue sharing information … Read more

Earth Hands and Houses Dome in Sussex, England

The Earth Hands and Houses Blog has some good photos of the first earthbag dome (a root cellar) in Sussex, England. The workshop was taught by Paulina Wojciechowska, an architect and author of Building with Earth, a guide to Flexible-Form earthbag construction, who has been studying, building and teaching natural building since 1996. Nicholas Harris, … Read more

Helical Earthbag Shelter

Ward-Karet wanted to gain some real world experience in the earthbag construction method while building in a manner that was in keeping with the surroundings. With a budget of $1,000, she designed and built the Helixa Shelter using earthbags, adobe, sunbrella fabric, and scraps from the architecture school. Read more at Inhabitat: Helical Earthbag Shelter … Read more

Earthbag Instructable

I’ve created a page at Instructables.com: Step-by-Step Earthbag Building. They have lots of good information there on many different topics. My Instructable is based on my previous article at EarthbagBuilding.com called Step-by-Step Earthbag Construction. But I changed things around a bit. See what you think. I’m always looking for ways to simplify and clarify the … Read more

Flood and Earthquake Resistant Earthbag Foundations in Pakistan

As you may well know, the recent floods in Pakistan destroyed or damaged 2 million homes, affecting 20 million people. PAKSBAB, an NGO building strawbale houses in Pakistan, uses gravel-filled earthbag foundations to protect their houses from water damage. To date, 22 houses have been built. In addition to providing flood protection, PAKSBAB uses earthbag … Read more

Teams of Three

Working in teams of three to build earthbag structures is often the most efficient. You could use fewer or more workers per team, but three seems like the most efficient in most cases. Worker #1: Filling buckets, moistening and mixing soil Worker #2: Carrying buckets of soil from worker #1 to worker #3 Worker #3: … Read more