There’s great, untapped potential for superinsulated earthbag buildings in cold climates. Here’s a way to combine the best features of earthbags and yurts. The basic idea is to combine earthbag walls filled with lightweight insulation such as scoria (lava rock), with a traditional yurt roof frame that’s insulated with perlite or vermiculite. Yurts (ghers) have … Read more
Bag stands can speed the bag filling process. Doni and Kaki provide details for building bag stands in their excellent book Earthbag Building: The Tools, Tricks and Techniques. I like using a “bucket chute” — a plastic bucket with the bottom cut out. Here we present two commercially available bag stands for those who don’t … Read more
Earthbag building (also called sandbag building) is surely one of the lowest cost, most practical building methods. First used by the military for building durable, bullet and blast resistant structures, this building method has recently experienced a surge of interest among do-it-yourself builders. There are now an estimated 1,000 to 1,500 earthbag structures, including homes, … Read more
Kelly and I try to track everything about earthbags and sandbags. Here’s a suggestion I came across on a January 4, 2009 post at SurvivalBlog.com. It’s another example of the amazing versatility of building with bags. “We came across a small discovery here on our ranch. We feed many animals and four dogs. So we … Read more
Strawbale houses were first built shortly after the invention of the baling machine. Settlers in western Nebraska who had access to this machine were quick to realize the potential of large, insulated building blocks. And the rest of the story, as they say, is history. This same potential now exists for earthbag building. The benefits … Read more
Readers are asking about two bag filling devices on the Internet — EZBagger and GoBagger. They scoop and funnel sand directly into bags. My preference for a bag filler was explained in my post titled Bucket Chutes (December 16, 2008). I explained how you can modify a standard $1 bucket in couple of minutes for … Read more