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
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
The specifications for reinforced earthbag walls in seismic regions from Structure1.com describe how to attach shear walls to earthbag walls. Properly built shear walls add a great deal of strength to earthbag structures, but are seldom discussed. I thought a detailed drawing of this feature would be helpful. The drawing below illustrates the key concepts. … Read more
This is my second post about hempcrete in just a few days. Obviously I’m pretty excited about it. The last post listed quite a few advantages of hempcrete. This post with even more exciting advantages is based on an article in the most recent issue of The Owner Builder magazine called Growing Your Own House, … Read more
I am extremely happy to announce another major first for earthbag building. Precision Engineering has generously provided drawings and specifications for building earthbag structures in seismic areas to meet code. The documents have been combined into one 6-page PDF and are now available online. Reinforced Earthbag Specifications is a 6-page PDF describing in drawings and … Read more
Today’s post is from The House Made of Hemp article at Ecogizmo. You can read the full article for free on their site. I’m posting this because I see no reason why hempcrete couldn’t be used in earthbags. This would eliminate the form work and require less tamping than building with soil-filled bags. This would … Read more