Take a fly-through tour of the Enviro Dome, one of my most popular earthbag plans. Please note, not every detail is shown. The loft vegas (wood poles) and wood stove, for instance, have been omitted for simplicity. But you still good a good sense of what the home looks like. Anyway, I hope you enjoy … Read more
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
You can still see adobe ruins scattered across the southwest. Even though the roofs have long since rotted away, the walls are still standing after decades or even 100 years or more of neglect. Clearly, adobe is pretty tough stuff, in part because clay platelets closely align themselves and bond together. It’s fairly straightforward to … 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