“A small underground earthbag house built at the Rhiannon Community in Ecuador.

I wanted a house, a real house with 4 walls and a roof. A friend of the community told me about superadobe. Superadobe uses a long plastic tube, filled with adobe and coiled up into a variety of shapes. Perfect, I thought, before noticing the price of the plastic on the net, $250 for the tube, forget it! After searching for alternatives I came across earthbag building. So with my building technique I set about sourcing materials, I drew up a quick floor plan, worked out how many earthbags I would need and headed to Santa Clara market in Quito to find the bags. Obviously I couldn’t find earthbags, I don’t even know what they are supposed to be, instead I found a shop selling woven plastic rice bags at 25c each. I’ll take 250 please, I told the lady in broken Spanish. So with my walls on my back I headed home to start the building.

I have all the materials to build my house. So far I’ve spent $329.40, not bad, cheaper than an iPhone.”

Read all about it at the source: Prodigals — My New Home
For sure, I’d rather have the house than a mobile phone.