“25th April 2015 is my 2nd birthday”, said Ang Furba Sherpa, our partner from Be Human Nepal. And it is so true for many Nepalese who had experienced the devastating earthquake which tore Nepal apart exactly year ago. The homes of our students at Manjushree Singa Primary School in Namkheli village were also not spared.
earthbag
Support Malawi Earthbag Projects
“Thank you Owen for this great development. Together with the Roscher Youth Development Centre in Rumphi, Malawi, I built a wonderful prototype of sandbag house last year, which now is impressing and convincing everyone about construction with earthbags (http://supportmalawi.org/en/projects/58-sandbaghouse). Aaand we now almost finished a first house for a teacher’s family.
Earthbag Production Rate: 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x
As an experienced builder, it’s fun to think of ways to improve productivity. Just imagine all the time and money you’ll save. This blog post explores three realistic earthbag building options: 1x = typical earthbag method; 2x = polypropylene tubes instead of bags; 3x = mechanized hyperadobe (raschel mesh tubes) on curved walls. (Note: An earthbag machine with 4x potential will be tested soon in Nepal, but we’ll save that for a later date.)
Earthbag Dome Home in Hungary
“Hello Owen, As you can see finally my first alone project has finished, hoorraayy!!. I want to say thank you for your guidance at the beginning and also I wanted to tell you that your book sometimes gave me that little help too because to reflect my knowledge and to see the things again in your book gave me a real help in times when I was not sure anymore what to do, not because I don’t know the things, because when my fear is coming up that I maybe can’t make it because it’s my first project with nobody around me who knows something about earthbag. So this was a quite heavy pressure for me because the people expected much and my building group knew nothing. In those moments your book was a real help because it was like talking with somebody who knows…
Steadfast Nepal Earthbag Houses
From Roger, the inventor: “Steadfast Nepal just bought five earthbag machines (mini Earth Home Builders). This will help speed up home building at least 4 X faster / home. These units are not powered by skid steers as they have electric motors and gear boxes. They are light weight and allow the remotest villages to build with use of a power generator. They are called MEHB mini earth home builders and with help of Steadfast they were custom built for needs in Nepal. We hope to get the skid steer unit to Nepal in the future as they are the fastest way to build but of course the poor roads and lack of funds are slowing this down.”
Earthbag Animal Shelter in Nepal Survived the Earthquakes with No Damage
“Earthbag is an affordable and earthquake safe building method for Nepal, says Animal Nepal. The animal welfare agency was pleasantly surprised when its earthbag/adobe shelter did not sustain a single crack during the earthquakes that hit Nepal in April and May.