We’re starting to get requests for disaster relief in the Philippines. This is where earthbag building really shines. I’ve researched this for years and don’t know of any building method that’s better suited to providing low cost, disaster resistant emergency shelter than earthbags. Earthbag structures can be designed to resist earthquakes, typhoons and anything else … Read more
Suggestions from one of our readers on how to make the straw bale emergency shelter more comfortable in cold climates. This amazing shelter can be built in just a few hours.
“I just found your website as I am on a quest to ‘put a roof over my head’ as cheaply as possible. I have just started to browse through your website and I read a comment from a lady who had ‘survived’ very cold weather and snow in the Emergency Straw Bale shelter, so I looked and found the post about this shelter.
Every once in a while I go back and look through my websites to check on things and look for fresh insights. I was very surprised to see this $300 Earthbag House video has received over 180,000 hits. That’s far above the average 2,000 hits on most of my videos and this got me thinking about why it’s so popular.
Our blog has quite a few free emergency shelters for various purposes. All designs can be found on this blog using the built-in the search engine. Free detailed plans for these shelters are on our Free House Plans page. I’ll add this latest design there if it proves popular. Leave a comment below if you’re interested in building this earthbag shelter.
Earthbag building is more than ‘just a good idea’. It could save your life, your family’s lives and everything you’ve worked for. Maybe you’re new to the concept and not yet ready to build a home this way. You might want to start out with a storm shelter to protect against hurricanes and tornadoes.
We always enjoy hearing about reader’s projects. A reader just sent me photos of their earthbag tornado shelter in Ohio. We’ve been encouraging earthbag storm shelters since the beginning of this blog, because they’re low cost, efficient, simple to build and can save lives. The links below explain in detail how they’re built.
“I wanted to show you a picture of the work in progress. It took us two summers to build by the way, we had lots of interruptions. We just made sure it was well covered when we weren’t working on it, and well secured for the winter that it didn’t have stucco on it and we didn’t have any problems doing it this way. We live in Southern Ohio so we will have to be very attentive at repairing any cracks due to the weather. We have one already that needs fixed. With the air flow inside the shelter and stucco on the outside hopefully it will dry out quickly if any moisture gets between the stucco and the bags. We will see how it goes.