Former Uganda missionary, Mark Long, joined with Haitian workers to construct the first earthbag house for the Haiti Christian Development Project during their brief summer evaluation trip, July 8-15, 2010. This demonstration home for Pierre Charles, long-time farm worker will be his first house. Since the completion of the house, admiring neighbors have become frequent … Read more
Part 1: Earthen Plaster Summary covered the basics of clay, sand and mixing earthen plaster. This next post explains how to apply earthen plaster to earthbag walls. First, I want to say how incredibly simple this is. It’s as basic as smearing mud on the walls. But a little added know how will help everything … Read more
I am pleased to report that there are some new earthbag projects happening in Haiti. In fact, there is a small mountain community, Leogane, where two unrelated projects are under way! Both of these projects have lively blogs where you can follow their activities almost daily. At blog.konbitshelter.org you can see how this group’s first … Read more
Here’s an overview of how we plastered the interior of our roundhouse with earthen plaster. After reviewing the various recipes and techniques, we decided to keep things as simple as possible. No doubt some of the extra plaster additives like manure and wheat paste can be helpful, but we wanted to see the results of … Read more
You can still see adobe ruins scattered across the southwest. Even though the roofs have long since rotted away, the walls are still standing after decades or even 100 years or more of neglect. Clearly, adobe is pretty tough stuff, in part because clay platelets closely align themselves and bond together. It’s fairly straightforward to … Read more
Most of the AutoCAD drawings for my 30 most popular plans are nearly complete, and so now I’ve started adding SketchUp perspective drawings to show what the completed houses will look like. My goal is to add one perspective drawing every 10 days to 2 weeks and finish in about one year. I have several … Read more