The Earth Home Builder™ is an extraordinary skid-steer operated (universal mount) Earth Home building machine. This unit is the same as the Instee Levee Builder® except it has been outfitted with specialized earth home building technology. The Earth Home Builder® fills earthbag tubes of many sizes at a rate as fast as 400ft per hour.
The following slideshows are a sampling of what’s available at SlideShare.net.
![The final finished structure of the two room earthbag school in Nepal. [The earthbag walls were] done in ten days by three paid labourers and 5-7 volunteers from the village.](https://naturalbuildingblog.com/wp-content/uploads/GMIN-earthbag-school1.jpg)
GMIN has built about 21 schools so far in Nepal out of various materials such as adobe, stone and earthbags. Successful fundraising will enable them to build another 20.
“School #18, Ciuridara, Dang, Nepal
Our volunteer Bidya Bajracharya had surveyed this village last year but could not support them with the required two rooms as they did not have rocks nearby and their mud quality was not good enough to make mudbricks. But after meeting Peter Jensen, also a Denmark GMIN ambassador has come up with the solution of building with earthbags. With this earthbag style we can build even in the most remote areas where there are no rocks and poor quality mud.
Update on Kerry’s roundhouse in Turkey that withstood an earthquake. The interior is looking real nice.
As many readers know, my passion is promoting very low cost housing that virtually anyone can afford. Earthbag is a natural option for housing the poor, however the thick walls take up a disproportionate amount of space on tiny urban lots such as in slums, and the hard work deters some. Thin walls have a lot of advantages. That’s one reason Dr. Anderton’s E-khaya housing system with narrow earthbag tubes caught my eye. I’m now considering how to adapt this basic method for wider use.
We finally got our pump house plastered at our homestead. We waited until after the rainy season to make sure the bags were dry. It’s looking pretty good considering the whole thing only cost about $200-$300. We had bags, salvaged wood and old roofing tiles left over from previous projects. The door and cement plaster were the only significant expenses.