Earthbag Houses in Parova, Pakistan

We’re very happy to hear of a project in Pakistan for 100 earthbag houses. The text below has been pieced together from the Pakwheels forum. Parova is 30 km from Dera Ismial Khan, badly effected from recent flood & now we are building the latest & economic free cost houses for them with the support … Read more

Witch’s Rock Surf Camp in Costa Rica

Today’s post is quoted from the Zephyr Eco website. Zephyr Eco is a project dedicated to self education and providing solutions for sustainable living. These include sustainable construction, organic farming, and free trade relationships. I have built many structures over the years. It started when I was about 25 or so, and my father and … Read more

Ekopedia: Earthbag Building

Ekopedia, an online encyclopedia of environmentally friendly alternative techniques, has a very good summary of earthbag building. I’ve quoted a few passages below. More and more people seem convinced that earthbag combines the best of the past and the future. Earthbag is a hybrid earthen masonry material. It combines one of the most basic building … Read more

Reinforcing Steel Recommended Instead of Buttresses

This is another major announcement courtesy of Structure1.com. Instead of building buttresses, which tend to be time consuming and difficult to design correctly for earthquake zones, they recommend using the same specifications we reported earlier for reinforced earthbag walls in seismic regions. The comments below are from the latest email exchange with Structure1.com. Refer to: … Read more

Photo Post #1

We’re starting a new feature today, where we post new photos we find on the Internet. Many earthbag photos we come across have little or no information, but are beautiful, interesting and worth sharing. As many of you know, the best projects are eventually profiled on our Projects page. But that requires having a certain … Read more

Spiral 2 Earthbag House

I have a new 2-bedroom version of my spiral house design. This version includes a large grow bed, exposed timber ceiling and living roof. Ample light is provided by the window wall next to the grow bed, window and door glazing, and suntubes. Distinguishing features include two bedrooms, masonry two-way fireplace, covered porch and cool … Read more