Dome for Australian Aborigines

Daniel Jones has a special feeling for the Australian Aborigines and conceived of a project to help them protect their heritage. He built an earthbag dome close to the beach at a swampy inlet that is an Aboriginal heritage protection site where an ongoing blockade against unsustainable greedy mansion development continues. The History Pod ‘Murrong … Read more

Phangan Earthworks

Co-founders Hubert Huot and Julien Balmer in Koh Phangan, Thailand have started a new website to promote earthbag building. Their jungle hillside property on Koh Phangan island is a tropical paradise and was the site of a workshop I was involved with in May. There are numerous beautiful structures at Phangan Earthworks that you can … Read more

CalEarth’s Prototype for Haiti

The current newsletter from CalEarth describes how they have been designing an earthbag shelter/home prototype for use in Haiti.  This structure, consisting of a 10 ft. main dome surrounded by 3 apses (a 7 ft. sleeping apse, a 5 ft. fire cooking apse with storage below, and a 5 ft. apse that can be used … Read more

YouTube Earthbag Channel

I’ve just started a YouTube channel about earthbag building in hopes of seeing this building method spread more quickly, and to help improve the standard of construction. It’s easier for many people to learn by watching rather than just reading about it, and it’s a fun way to pass some time. Hope you enjoy it. … Read more

To Code or Not to Code?

We often get questions about where in the U.S. it is possible to build a home without some authority looking over your back and telling you what can and can’t be done. This is especially pertinent to earthbag building since as yet there are no codes that directly apply to this method, meaning that it … Read more

Interior Walls

Using earthbags for interior walls would take up too much space and so they’re generally not recommended for this purpose. Thinner interior walls are more efficient. The easiest solution is to frame interior walls with 2x4s or, for plumbing walls, 2x6s. But there are more sustainable alternatives. On some of my plans I use adobe, … Read more