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Anyone who is awake can clearly see the social and economic turmoil all around us. The need to prepare has never been more clear.
storm shelter
How We Built A Low Cost Tornado Shelter
![How We Built A Low Cost [Earthbag] Tornado Shelter by Pamela Swackhammer](https://naturalbuildingblog.com/wp-content/uploads/How-We-Built-A-Low-Cost-Tornado-Shelter.jpg)
Yea, another earthbag book. Kelly and I just published our new books (see links on right side of page if you missed them). There’s this new book on building earthbag tornado shelters. Plus there’s another earthbag book coming out any day that we’ll blog about soon.
Storm Safety Shelter
“This was designed for safety in mind. We have had many requests in natural disaster areas (Oklahoma, Colorado, California) that we decided to make a universal plan that meets the international standard for storm shelter safety with an environmentally sound method. The Storm Safety Shelter is designed in accordance with the 2009 IBC and the 2008 ICC/NSSA Standard for the Design and Construction of Storm Shelters (ICC-500.)”
Earthbag Tornado Shelter
We always enjoy hearing about reader’s projects. A reader just sent me photos of their earthbag tornado shelter in Ohio. We’ve been encouraging earthbag storm shelters since the beginning of this blog, because they’re low cost, efficient, simple to build and can save lives. The links below explain in detail how they’re built.
“I wanted to show you a picture of the work in progress. It took us two summers to build by the way, we had lots of interruptions. We just made sure it was well covered when we weren’t working on it, and well secured for the winter that it didn’t have stucco on it and we didn’t have any problems doing it this way. We live in Southern Ohio so we will have to be very attentive at repairing any cracks due to the weather. We have one already that needs fixed. With the air flow inside the shelter and stucco on the outside hopefully it will dry out quickly if any moisture gets between the stucco and the bags. We will see how it goes.
How to Build a Low Cost Earthbag Tornado Shelter
Designing an earthbag tornado shelter has been on my to-do list for years. My intent was to modify my free plans at Instructables.com (see below). Yesterday I can came across the following article at Yahoo and found out concrete tornado shelters are costing thousands of dollars. So I decided to write this blog post to summarize how to make your own storm shelter out of earthbags (sand bags), local soil, gravel, barbed wire and plaster. The dome shown above cost about $300 a few years ago. A smaller dome used only for emergencies could probably be built for half that cost if you eliminate the buttresses, the living roof (earth and plants on top) and are clever in making a door out of salvaged materials.
2-story Roundhouse above Survival Shelter
Some people dream of buying a remote getaway as a place to escape to if/when there’s a breakdown in society. Here’s an alternative for those who can’t or don’t want to move and develop a remote site: build an earthbag survival shelter and put a house on top to conceal it. (I’d build with 18″-24″ … Read more