Question: I dream of building a small eco friendly country ‘cabin’. My location will be in Alberta or BC, Canada. Do you prefer earthbag technique now over straw bale? Site will be a cold climate compared to many of your examples. I do have concerns on moisture and rot for essentially an organic material. — Scott
cold climate
Senior Living Straw Bale Home in Vermont
“HOLLAND — With straw bale walls, enclosed in a lime, clay, straw plaster that was mixed on site, it’s not exactly what comes to mind when you think of a senior living facility.
A tour of how we live & work off grid in our straw bale home
Lots of nice details! This video is worth watching more than once.
“A tour of how we live & work off grid in our straw bale home – Riverstone Studios showing the interior of our home, wind turbine, solar panels, and the finishing work in our home.
Straw Bale Emergency Shelter Cold Weather Upgrades
Suggestions from one of our readers on how to make the straw bale emergency shelter more comfortable in cold climates. This amazing shelter can be built in just a few hours.
“I just found your website as I am on a quest to ‘put a roof over my head’ as cheaply as possible. I have just started to browse through your website and I read a comment from a lady who had ‘survived’ very cold weather and snow in the Emergency Straw Bale shelter, so I looked and found the post about this shelter.
Affordable Lava Rock Insulation for the Far North
Porous lava rock — scoria (cinders) and pumice — is an ideal building material. We’ve covered this amazing material many times on our blog, but I just learned something very exciting. It turns out scoria is available in Alaska, British Columbia and to some extent the Yukon. All these areas have cinder cones (a type of volcano) that produce scoria. This is great news because porous lightweight lava rock is a good insulator and also fireproof, rot proof, easy to work with and doesn’t attract pests. It’s affordable if there’s a nearby source to minimize shipping costs. So this discovery makes it practical to build lightweight superinsulated earthbag houses in Alaska and Canada. Use the search engine on the right to search this site for details and example projects.
More Choices for Insulated Earthbag Houses
There are lots of options for building insulated earthbag houses. At this time, scoria and pumice are my favorite. These materials are fireproof, rot proof, easy to work with, don’t attract pests, lightweight, etc. Kelly Hart pioneered the use of scoria bags in his dome home and carriage house in Colorado, and in my opinion … Read more