low cost

Rocket Stove Mass Heaters

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Rocket stove mass heaters come in all shapes and sizes
Rocket stove mass heaters come in all shapes and sizes

We’ve briefly mentioned rocket stove mass heaters before. Here’s an excellent site that compiles a lot of free info about them and has free plans. (Detailed drawings are for sale, but anyone should be able to figure out the process by looking at the illustrations, reading the text and watching the videos.)

“Rocket mass heaters in a nutshell:
– heat your home with 80% to 90% less wood
– exhaust is nearly pure steam and CO2 (a little smoke at the beginning)
– the heat from one fire can last for days
– you can build one in a day and half
– folks have built them spending less than $20

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Straw Bale Mud House Weekend

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“Friends and guests from all over the world came to our land in late January to help us build a natural straw bale and mud house for Tit Yai, an Issan man who is partially paralyzed. We were fortunate to have teachers from baandin.org and Michel Spann from Holland along with children and teachers from the Sri Sangwan Khon Kaen School for children with disabilities and many local Issan people help us make the house.”

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Wegain Zone: Kathmandu Earthbag Workshop

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Kathmandu, Nepal earthbag workshop poster
Kathmandu, Nepal earthbag workshop poster

Wegain zone is vegan and no smoking non profit zone with five different organisations in the zone in houses built with earth friendly style. We have two rooms built out of mudbricks, three out of bottle and mud, one out of earthbag and now we want to build a dome out of earthbags. The main focus of this zone is to show documentaries. We have an indoor and outdoor theatre and common space for anyone who wants to share their knowledge and organise workshop for free.
Sangbo

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Deviation to an Earthbag Concept: Earthbag Firepit

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Firepit made with weed barrier fabric and tamped soil
Firepit made with weed barrier fabric and tamped soil

“It was another great weather weekend up in WY. I got up around 2PM on Saturday and started working on stabilizing the walls with an earthbag process. Instead of buying the polypropylene or burlap bags, a landscaping supplier Weedbarrier.com sold me a woven landscaping cloth. 15′ X 360′ of it as a matter of fact -figuring this will get me further than buying 1000 earth/sand bags at a time. So far, the process is working out well. I’m mixing approximately (5-5-1) 5 shovels full of dirt, 5 – gravel and 1 – portland cement. Once it’s all mixed (dry), you shovel it into the cloth (of varying lengths) and fold it over. From here, you flip the open side over, facing the ground – wet it down, place and shape it, then tamp it down to set it.

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Ernas Mamas builds training centre with affordable materials

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A Vanuatu women’s training center is being built with earthbags.
A Vanuatu women’s training center is being built with earthbags.

“Mamas making up the Ernas Women’s Association have tapped onto a creative initiative to boost their everyday income, at the same time promote tourism development within their area, when they decided to build a house using much cheaper and affordable materials which will be used as a training centre.

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