Grub hoes and grape hoes are my favorite digging tools. Shovels work fine with loose material such as gravel and sand, but it’s rather difficult digging clayey soil such as road base with shovels. One of these hoes, however, can cut right into the soil and readily pull the material into buckets without lifting. Think … 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
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
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
Here’s a brief summary of the cement plastering process we used on the exterior of our earthbag roundhouse: Step 1: Put cement between the bags in the gaps. Step 2: Add thin coat of cement over bags. Step 3: Add more cement. Step 4: Add more cement. Step 5: Trowel the plaster smooth and use … Read more
We just finished installing light fixtures in our earthbag roundhouse. This step has taken a lot longer than anticipated. The porch light by the front door was easy to find since it is conventional looking. But we wanted something special inside for our three wall sconces because they’re more prominent. Two sconces, one on each … Read more