This bit of news is a nice breakthrough for rice hull earthbag building. Using a suggestion from Richard, a long time reader, I made a test bag using raschel mesh and rice hulls. I had previously ruled out using rice hulls in mesh bags, because it seemed certain that the hulls would fall through. Well, it turns out some hulls do fall through, but not many. The hulls naturally jam up against each other and only a negligible amount (say 3% or so) fall through.
A hat tip to Gail for sending us this story. Thousands of Homes Built from Earth Bags Made from Re-claimed Fishing Nets — Disaster Relief Well not yet, but it’s a good idea. The worlds oceans and dumps are swimming in old fishing nets and building something useful from them seems an appropriate use for … Read more
Several previous posts have already covered the basics of the Eternally Solar’s earthbag system. Today Dr. Johnny Anderton of Eternally Solar / EarthBagBuild explains how mesh bags can be sewn to work like their bags. Owen: What about sewing mesh bags or tubes (Hyperadobe) to create a product similar to yours? Can owner builders do … Read more
I finally had a chance to build with mesh bags. Previously I had made some test bags, but this week we included a whole course of mesh bags in our current Cool Pantry project. More photos coming soon. In this post I want to describe some of the differences in working properties between mesh and … Read more
Patti Stouter has been busy talking to bag suppliers, and ordering and testing samples. The goal is to create a list of the best suppliers with the best products and prices. (We currently have a short list of suppliers on our Resources page at EarthbagBuilding.com, but it’s more of a random list of companies.) Here’s … Read more
Kelly Hart posted a close-up photo of a mesh bag the other day. I noticed it was different than the bags we are using, and so I’m posting this photo for comparison. Our bags are 16”x32” with vertical threads and horizontal strips. Both types will probably work, but we want to document the different types … Read more