“Jaime Marin describes his experiment with building an earthbag root cellar in Belize. Using the most cost effective resources available at hand to develop a minimalistic but effective source of shelter and infrastructure for this transitional home project for children at Barzakh Falah in Georgeville, Belize. The project uses volunteer labor as it gets closer and closer to completion and minimal funds solely for materials.
earthbag house
Earthbag Home in Belize
“Designed by the owners, a doctor and nurse from Cambridge, Ontario, Canada. Built by local Belizean builder, Jorge Rosales, this organic home emanates a sense of place at the junction of Parrot’s Cove and Forest Hill Drive in our Belize Eco Village. A sublime design.”
Open Source Disaster Resistant Earthbag Homes for Nepal
From the archives — I realized yesterday that this open source disaster resistant earthbag house could be easily adapted to Nepal.
Add a roof of recycled wood and metal roofing and for very little money (under $1,000) you’d have a safe, decent home in short order. This design is 25 sq.m (270 sq.ft or about 16’x16’ interior) It’s extremely simple and easily to build.
Earthquake Resistant Earthbag Building Guidelines PDF
Earthen buildings are strong in compression, but need help against tension or bending stresses. The barbed wire and vertical rebar in earthbag add important tensile strength.
More than 50 earthbag buildings in Nepal have recently survived 0.5- >0.7g of earthquake motion. This same motion destroyed poorly reinforced and unreinforced masonry buildings around them, mud block and brick alike.
Summary of Earthquake Resistant Earthbag Building Methods
We’ve posted quite a few blog posts over the years about how to reinforce earthbag buildings. Due to the earthquake in Nepal, we’re getting lots of questions about reinforced earthbag methods for earthquake regions. The following list will save people lots of time searching our blog and websites. Watch for more news on this topic in the future.
Report from Her Farm, Nepal
How to build an earth bag house in rural Nepal at Her Farm
Posted by Scott MacLennan on Tuesday, 14 May 2013
“This is how we built an earthbag house in a village in Nepal. It’s cheap and easy to do.