Jake Filling Earthbags with Machine


“I thought about and researched what bag material would be the best to use and what would be the easiest way to fill it with minimal help. Most of what I saw on the internet for earthbag building was a large group of hippies with coffee cans filling earthbags (in my opinion) very slowly or people using various stands to hold open and fill individual bags and place them one at a time.

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Earthbag Production Rate: 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x

As an experienced builder, it’s fun to think of ways to improve productivity. Just imagine all the time and money you’ll save. This blog post explores three realistic earthbag building options: 1x = typical earthbag method; 2x = polypropylene tubes instead of bags; 3x = mechanized hyperadobe (raschel mesh tubes) on curved walls. (Note: An earthbag machine with 4x potential will be tested soon in Nepal, but we’ll save that for a later date.)

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Reader Feedback on the Earth Home Builder

Prototype structure built by the Earth Home Builder
Prototype structure built by the Earth Home Builder

We got a great comment about the Earth Home Builder that mechanizes earthbag construction. I try my best to explain things, but sometimes it helps to hear things explained a little differently from someone else’s point of view. Thank you for sharing your insights Sarah.

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The Earth Home Builder

The Earth Home Builder mechanizes earthbag building
The Earth Home Builder mechanizes earthbag building

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.

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Bobcat Concrete Mixer Attachment

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZBNgx9shY4&feature=related This Bobcat mixer bucket caught my eye on YouTube. This would come in real handy on large projects to speed construction. I’m posting it here to show how to mechanize projects such as the lightweight geopolymer earthbag system that I’ve been describing the last few days. Source: Aplec Group