Earthbag House Construction Resources

Owen Geiger and Kelly Hart at the Earthbag Building Blog have been busy posting a lot of great detailed information about how to build earthbag structures over the last few months. I’ve been really enjoying their 3D drawings, descriptions, and learning the nitty gritty of how earthbag walls are really put together.

Earthbag construction is a type of earthen home construction that essentially involves filling bags (like sandbags) with dirt. The walls this method produces are comparable to adobe, cob, and rammed earth in thickness and thermal mass but earthbags seems to me to be a much faster way of building with dirt.

Here are some examples of the how-to posts you’ll find at the Earthbag Building Blog.

  • Structural Mesh
  • Estimating Costs
  • Alternative Bond Beams for Straight Walls
  • Alternative Bond Beam for Curved Structures
  • Filling Bags to Capacity
  • Using Scrap Metal for Bracing
  • Corrugated Metal for Bond Beams and Wall Bracing
  • Roofing Hold-downs
  • Alternative Bond Beams and Lintels for Straight, Vertical Walls
  • What Size Bag is Best?
  • Using Sand Versus Tamped Soil
  • Closing Ends of Earthbags

This is the kind of resource that really empowers people to invent their own housing solutiuons. Owen and Kelly, thanks for putting all this great information out there!

Image credit to Patti Stouter, Kelly Hart and Owen Geiger.

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