I had a great talk the other day with a freelance journalist who travels and documents things such as the earthquakes in Nepal. One of our common concerns is how NGOs, and foreigners in general, respond to disasters. Aid work is fraught with well-intentioned people and innovative solutions that often go terribly wrong. Remember the emergency food dropped to war refugees by US military planes? It was unrecognizable to them and so they ended up feeding most of it to their animals.
earthbag house
Roofed Half Dome Design
This is a new house design that I just thought up yesterday. Basically, it’s a dome shape that’s cut off at the 8’ height level with a roof on top. The main benefit is to replace the harder to build top portion of the dome with a faster, easier to construct roof that will protect the earthbag walls. This is a good design for earthquake regions like Nepal that get a lot of rain. Lightweight roofs are preferable to heavy roofs in seismic areas, plus domes will have moisture problems and mold in rainy climates. Metal roofing would be a good choice for this design.
Expanding Earthbag Building in Nepal
Earthbag building in Nepal is growing swiftly for numerous reasons. For one, around 55 earthbag buildings survived the earthquakes with little or no damage. That’s about the most powerful advertising you can get. People saw for themselves how earthbag buildings are stronger than the rest of the buildings in the area. In some cases almost all of the other buildings collapsed – including concrete structures – while the earthbag buildings safely withstood the quakes. This obviously made a huge impression on people and the word has spread rapidly.
Low Cost Village Housing for Nepal
The greatest need for housing in Nepal is in poor rural villages. Not only can they not afford cement and steel, it’s not practical to carry these heavy materials 1-2 days over mountain passes. We need to identify the most practical low cost earthbag building methods and create a document showing best practices.
Reciprocal Roof at Home-Farm.org
“Reciprocal frame roofs are highly regarded in the natural building community though there is a limited amount of information about them on the internet. Resources that we’ve found helpful are listed at the bottom of this post. There is evidence of similar structures dating back to antiquated castles of Japan and Eskimo huts, though I have yet to find images of these.
Low Cost Earthbag Options for Nepal
Budgets are obviously limited for most every project in Nepal, while at the same time the need for affordable housing and schools is almost endless – hundreds of thousands of new, safe structures are needed. Here are a few suggestions to rebuild sustainably and affordably.