Earthbag Homes

Earthbag Houses

Earthbag buildings are environmentally friendly, eco-conscious, energy efficient buildings that are built out of bags of earth, stacked in certain patterns and on a solid foundation. Because of their design they easily make good use of passive solar heat.

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Introduction

Earthbag construction is an inexpensive method to create structures which are both strong and can be quickly built. It is a natural building technique that evolved from historic military bunker construction techniques and temporary flood-control dike building methods. The technique requires very basic construction materials: sturdy sacks, filled with inorganic material usually available on site (such as sand, gravel, clay or crushed volcanic rock). Walls are gradually built up by laying the bags in courses ? forming a staggered pattern similar to bricklaying. The walls are almost always curved to provide improved lateral stability, forming round rooms and domed ceilings like an igloo. To improve rigidity between each row of bags barbed wire is often placed between the courses. Twine is also sometimes wrapped around the bags to tie one course to the next, serving to hold the in-progress structure together and add strength. The structure is typically finished with plaster, stucco or adobe both to shed water and to prevent any degradation from solar radiation. This construction technique can be used for emergency shelters, temporary or permanent housing, barn or most conceivable small-to-medium-sized structures.

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Specials

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What do you think of Earthbag homes?

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I like them and the idea.

Graceonline says:

Love the concept. Nader Khalili, the architect who developed the earthbag concept, is teaching people around the world how to construct emergency shelters quickly with dirt, sandbags and barbed wire, but his homes are beautiful. You can see examples on the CalEarth website: http://tinyurl.com/bzayr9

Posted February 14, 2009

MiaBellezza says:

I think the concept is wonderful and the home styles can be made to look very unique. 5*!

Posted January 05, 2009

HeartMagic says:

Looks interesting as the two of us soon will be constructing our first adobe mud brick homes. This could be something we may consider working with for additional small structures on our site.

Posted December 30, 2008

I don't like them or the idea.

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Videos

Earthbag Building: Building with Bags

From http://www.earthbagbuilding.com comes the first minute of a DVD called Building with Bags: How We Made Our Experimental Earthbag/Papercrete Home. See the website for many other homes and lots of info!

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23857 views
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Earthbag House in the woods

short tour of an earthbag house

4.31

Runtime: 3:35
9355 views
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earthbag first corner

The start of an earth bag building and some homemade music.

Runtime: 4:56
1160 views
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Pictures

earthbagwall

Lama Dome 12-2008 11

Lama Dome 12-2008 12

Lama Dome 12-2008 10

Lama Dome 12-2008 5

Lama Dome 12-2008 7

Lama Dome 12-2008 8

Lama Dome 12-2008 9

Lama Dome 12-2008 6

Entrance Revealed

Bert's Eye View

Vaulting Aesthetics

Skylight

Strawberry Block

Dome Progress 12/07

Earthbag/Adobe

Office

Bedroom

Open Hut

Strong Wall

Sun Room Entrance

Earthbag Dog

Another Example

Building in Progress

Village

Children at Village

Ceramic Dome

Inside

Sleeping Space

Bag Vault

Strong

Dome

Enter Here

Village Drinking Fou...

Earthbag Architectur...

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Vertical Wall Earthbag Home

Small Dome

Complex Dome

Earthbag Buddhist Hermitage Building

Earthbag Home

Earthbag Sun Building

Earthbag Dome

Vertical Wall Earthbag Home

Earthbag School

Earthbag Library :-)

Links

ArchEarth: ArchEarth is a design firm committed to the natural art of living healthy. They specialize in alternative architecture and natural building. They provide building plans of energy efficient homes, remodels and additions. For clients who want to live in an environment that's healthy and promotes creativity in our lives.
Cal-Earth: Cal-Earth is at the cutting edge of Earth Art and Ceramic Architecture technologies today. Founded and directed by the internationally renowned architect and author Nader Khalili in 1986, it's scope spans technical innovations published by NASA for lunar base construction, to design and development of housing for the world's homeless for the United Nations.
Dream Green Homes: DreamGreenHomes.com can help you discover a home plan that matches your needs and aesthetics, in a way that will conserve energy and resources.
Earth Hands And Houses: Earth Hands and Houses is a non-profit organisation set up in 1997 with the vision to enable people to build their own shelter. It achieves this through a program of demonstration projects, workshops, presentations, and other services. Our main focus is to encourage the application of low-tech, affordable, sustainable building techniques, utilising indigenous building materials and easily accessible methods. We believe there is no 'one' technique as a solution to the world's housing needs, but an endless combination of materials and techniques. Each place is different, each culture is different, and therefore each home should be a response to this specific need.
Earthbag Building: This website was conceived, written, and organized by Kelly Hart and Dr. Owen Geiger in an effort to bring the concept of earthbag building to the broadest possible audience. It is offered with an attitude of good will toward all of those who might employ the ideas and further this very sustainable approach to building.
EarthLodge: The EarthLodge project took place in the summer and fall of 2003. The project was aborted at the beginning of winter, and it was not resumed the following spring. Instead the participants have all gone on to work on other eco-building projects across the world. Thank you, EarthLodge, for spawning a natural building movement in Southern Ontario!
Geiger Research Institute Of Sustainable Building: The Geiger Research Institute of Sustainable Building is devoted to finding solutions to the world's housing problems. We believe the answer lies in education - helping others help themselves.
Green Home Building: GreenHomeBuilding.com is where you can find a wide range of information about sustainable architecture and natural building.
How Earthbag Homes Work: HowStuffWorks.com tackles the in's and out's of Earthbag buildings.
Natural Homes: Earthbag building courses and workshops.
OK OK OK Productions: What originally began as a project for illustrating a documentary film has grown into a full-time occupation. We now have over 20 years of combined experience in earthbag building. Our goal is to innovate and inspire affordable, enduring, eco-friendly homes, outbuildings, root cellars, and garden walls, which are as beautiful as they are functional.

Books

Earthbag Building

Earthbag Building: The Tools, Tricks and Techniques (Natural Building Series)

by: Kaki Hunter, Donald Kiffmeyer

Amazon Price: $22.76 (as of 07/06/2009)
List Price: $29.95
Used Price: $17.93

Over 70 percent of Americans cannot afford to own a code-enforced, contractor-built home. This has led to widespread interest in using natural materials-straw, cob, and earth-for building homes and other buildings that are inexpensive, and that rely largely on labor rather than expensive and often environmentally-damaging outsourced materials.

Earthbag Building is the first comprehensive guide to all the tools, tricks, and techniques for building with bags filled with earth-or earthbags. Having been introduced to sandbag construction by the renowned Nader Khalili in 1993, the authors developed this "Flexible Form Rammed Earth Technique" over the last decade. A reliable method for constructing homes, outbuildings, garden walls and much more, this enduring, tree-free architecture can also be used to create arched and domed structures of great beauty-in any region, and at home, in developing countries, or in emergency relief work.

This profusely illustrated guide first discusses the many merits of earthbag construction, and then leads the reader through the key elements of an earthbag building:
Special design considerations
Foundations, walls and floors
Electrical, plumbing and shelving
Lintels, windows and door installations
Roofs, arches and domes
Exterior and interior plasters.

With dedicated sections on costs, making your own specialized tools, and building code considerations, as well as a complete resources guide, Earthbag Building is the long-awaited, definitive guide to this uniquely pleasing construction style.

Kaki Hunter and Donald Kiffmeyer have been involved in the construction industry for the last 20 years, specializing in affordable, low-tech, low-impact building methods that are as natural as possible. They developed the "Flexible Form Rammed Earth Technique" of building affordably with earthbags and have taught the subject and contributed their expertise to several books and journals on natural building.

Avg. Customer Rating:

Building With Earth

Building With Earth: A Guide to Flexible-Form Earthbag Construction (A Real Goods Solar Living Book)

by: Paulina Wojciechowska

Amazon Price: (as of 07/06/2009)
List Price: $24.95
Used Price: $59.88

This is the first book published about earthbag building, and still one of the best.

Avg. Customer Rating:

Sandbag Shelter

Emergency Sandbag Shelter and Eco-Village Manual - How to Build Your Own with Superadobe / Earthbag over 700 photos & illustrations

by: Nader Khalili

Amazon Price: (as of 07/06/2009)
List Price:
Used Price:

The book, with over 700 photos and illustrations, shows how to use sandbags and barbed wire, the materials of war, for peaceful purposes as the new invention known as Superadobe or earth-bag, which can shelter millions of people around the globe as a temporary as well as permanent housing solution. This affordable, sel-help, sustainable, and disaster resistant structural system is a spin off from Khalili's presentation to NASA for habitat on the moon and Mars, which successfully passed rigorous tests for strict California earthquake building codes.

Avg. Customer Rating:

Ceramic Houses and Earth Architecture: How to Build Your Own

by: Nader Khalili

Amazon Price: $17.79 (as of 07/06/2009)

How-to-build step by step an adobe and ceramic architecture that is affordable and self-help. How to build arches, vaults, domes, and utilize the natural energy of wind, sun-and-shade to help save forests and create a sustainable architecture. How to fire and glaze an entire building after it is constructed from clay-earth on site. A NEW UPDATE CHAPTER introducing the Superadobe technology, building with almost any on-site soil using earthbags and barbed wire.

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Free eBooks

All files are in PDF format.

Building An Earthbag Dome: Describes hows a 4 meter diameter dome was built at a sustainability education center in Australia.
Earth Architecture and Ceramics: The sandbag, superadobe, superblock construction system.
Earthbag Building in the Humid Tropics: Simple Instructions: A step-by-step guide that covers materials, layouts, and general instructions for building with earthbags.
Emergency Earthbag Shelter Proposal: The building concept outlined here consists of sandbag (earthbag) walls filled with sand or soil from the site, and tarps for roofing.
Emergency Sandbag Shelter Training Guide: This two-page file outlines Nader Khalili's approach to building an emergency shelter. These are very simple instructions that utilize the long tube approach to earthbag building. It is quite graphic in nature and is intended to convey the concepts primarily through these graphics.
Handbook for Building Homes of Earth: This reprint covers a variety of earthen building techniques, including adobe blocks, compressed earth blocks, and rammed earth. It also discusses appropriate roofs, foundations and surface coatings.
Lunar and Terrestrial Sustainable Building Technology in the New Millenium: An interview with Nader Khalili.
Simple Earth Buildings for the Humid Tropics: A 17 page doucment which provides some basic ideas for simple houses that can be built of earthbags. Examples of different styles of piers and roofs and windows are shown to help you understand the options available.
Shaping Buildings for the Humid Tropics: Cultures, Climate, and Materials: A 28 page document that describes how to use ventilation, shading, plantings and insulation to provide comfort in hot humid climates. It includes some discussion of the use of earthbags in achieving these goals.
Staff Housing for Twin Streams Environmental Education Center: An eBook describing a unique approach to building large, vertical wall structures without buttressing, that utilize simple lattice frames to help support the walls.
The Merits of Earthbag Building: The first chapter of Earthbag Building by Kaki Hunter and Donald Kiffmeyer, published by New Society.

Construction Method

The basic construction method begins by digging a trench down to undisturbed mineral subsoil. In this is placed a foundation, consisting of a row of woven bags or tubes, filled with the material of choice. On top of these, one or more strands of four-pronged barbed wire are placed, which dig into the bag's weave and prevent slippage between it and subsequent bag rows or layers. On top of the barbed layer, the next row of bags (or tube) is placed (offset by half a bag width to form a staggered pattern), either to be prefilled with material and hoisted up, or filled "in place", particularly for the tube style Superadobe. The weight of this earth/sand-filled bag pushes down on the barbed wire strands, locking the bag in place on the row below. The same process continues layer upon layer, to form walls. A roof can be formed by gradually sloping the upper walls inward to form a dome, or traditional types of roof construction may be used instead.

Bag Types

The most popular type of bag is made of woven polypropylene, such as the type often used to transport rice or other grains. Indeed many used grain bags are reused as earthbags. Polypropylene is chosen for its resistance to water damage, rot and insects, and its low cost. Some of the organic/natural material advocates prefer hemp, burlap or other natural-fiber bags, like "gunny sacks"; however, these will rot if not kept perfectly dry.

Filler Materials

Almost any inorganic material can be used as filler material.

Thermal insulation is an important consideration, particularly for climates that experience temperature extremes. The thermal insulating value of a material is directly related to both the porosity of the material and the thickness of the wall. Crushed volcanic rock, pumice or rice-hulls (see Rice-hull bagwall construction), yield higher insulation value than clay or sand.

Roofing

Various methods of roofs may be used, including earthbag extensions of the wall which create barrel vaulted or domed roofs. Windows and doors are typically formed in with corbeling or brick-arch techniques, sometimes on temporary forms, or with a lintel supporting the top. Light may be brought in by glass-capped pipes or salvaged bottles which are placed between the rows of bags during construction. The addition of lintels allows square windows to be used.

Finishing

To prevent UV damage to the fabric, it is necessary to cover the outer surfaces of the exposed bags with an opaque material. There are many possible choices for this material, including stucco, plaster or adobe. Waterproofing is also needed for non-vertical elements, in all but the driest climates, and can be accomplished by using additives in the bag-fill material, or in the stucco or as an added layer on the outer surface. Some designers/builders use a planted-earth "living roof" ("green-roof") to top the structure, or more conventional framing and roof finishes may be placed atop earth-bag walls.