Shredded Styrofoam in Earthbags

My name is Roberta, I live in Minnesota. I am writing because I am interested in building an Insulated Earthbag house and I have a few questions. I am thinking about building a play house first to try and then a home. I have been researching lots of different building materials and ideas. I was … Read more

Rice Hull House Wall Section

Yesterday’s blog post on Production Earthbag Building using Rice Hulls introduced one method for building walls with rice hulls. As you can see from the drawing above, the construction process is very straightforward. This method uses a standard post and beam frame with posts set in concrete footers and beams attached to the posts with … Read more

More Choices for Insulated Earthbag Houses

There are lots of options for building insulated earthbag houses. At this time, scoria and pumice are my favorite. These materials are fireproof, rot proof, easy to work with, don’t attract pests, lightweight, etc. Kelly Hart pioneered the use of scoria bags in his dome home and carriage house in Colorado, and in my opinion … Read more

Earthbag Scoria Casita

Here’s another great project. This small domicile demonstrates how scoria homes are faster and easier to build than bags filled with soil, and more insulating. This doesn’t mean standard soil-filled earthbags are obsolete. There are pros and cons to each system, however, I strongly encourage using scoria bags (or pumice or other suitable lightweight fill … Read more

Another Insulated Earthbag Method

This new insulated earthbag idea is from Chris, one of our readers. “Feel free to post away with the idea–after all, ideas are to be shared not owned. It seems like a good way to efficiently build thermal mass inside insulation, while being another (simpler? faster?) alternative to compartmentalized-sewn bags or laying inner and outer … Read more

Alternative Fill Materials for Eternally Solar Earthbags

We’ve been discussing the Eternally Solar earthbag building system at length. Engineering tests show their walls exceed building code requirements even when filled with sand. Their bags are also used to form lintels and bond beams. As exciting and practical as this is, there’s a wide range of other options. Their earthbags can be filled … Read more