SAND CASTLES FOR "GROWNUPS"
1300 rice sacks + 60 000lbs of sand + some barbed wire + A few extra odds and ends = 1 house.
Superadobe, or earthbag building, simply uses compacted earth (sand in my case) in feed or ice sacks as the structural and load bearing walls. The technique is not complicated and does not require any special expertise to construct, can be erected quickly and the materials needed to build the walls can usually be acquired at a very low cost.
How low?
I built our 600 sq foot earthbag house for just over 1000$ U.S. funds.
I had the land available for free (an unused snake of land beside my restaurant) and scavenged some of the materials from other buildings (toilets and sinks), but the rest of the materials I bought new, although at low cost, as I am in Thailand where things don't tend to cost as much as they do elsewhere.
The house is about 20 meters long, and a varied 4-5 meters in width, is made entirely from sandbags from foundation to wall tops and is covered with a sod and flower planted living roof.
I have never been considered handy- the go to guy for a "fix it" job, and as such encountered a lot of skepticism, some outright laughter and the occasional threat of divorce as I explained my plan and the benefits of living in "the mud hut" as my family had so kindly christened the earthbag project.
I started digging anyways. It took about a week to dig the foundation trench for the wall perimeter. A not entirely even, or level trench of 30-40 Cm's deep by a half meter wide. It was hard, sweaty work, and that finished (beautiful to me) hole in the ground steeled my resolve to keep the project moving. I bought 1500 hundred new rice sacks (about 200$), ordered 5 cubic meters of sand and set to work.
I shovel filled my first 10 bags and started heaving them ( holy crap, heavy heavy heavy) down to the end of the trench. After a few days I had completed my first course of bags, wrenched my back and almost broken my spirit. Wondering how I'd ever get this thing finished I grimly began a new day's work by filling some bags (now done doggy style through the legs) and began humping the first bag down the wall. Lift and rest, lift and rest, lift and slide and rest,slide slide slide and rest. Wait a minute, this wasn't so bad, these 80 lb bags could be quite easily slid across the slick surface of the previous course of bags. Maybe there was hope after all!
I laid three times the bags I had done the previous day while uttering only a fraction of the curses and dark mutterings that had kept onlookers well away during the first course of bags. Things were looking good!
I fell into a routine: filling bags, positioning the barbed wire used to stick courses of bags together, dragging full bags down the wall until in position, folding the open bag tops over the sides of the bags, flopping them into place atop the waiting barbed wire and tamping the placed bags by jumping (with my ample 110+kg body-down to a leaner 90kg by the end of the building) barefoot on the bags until they felt pretty firm. And repeat. And repeat. I aimed for about 40 bags placed a day, which doesn't sound like a lot, but tired me out plenty!
As the weeks became months I watched my earthbag walls growing with satisfaction and pride. I began really enjoying the work. It was very physical, but also quite meditative, as my mind would alternately wander or sometimes clear completely save for the attention needed to complete the tasks at hand.
The design was a work in progress. My roofing plans changed repeatedly after numerous failed small scale experiments, and I had no idea what the damn thing would look like when finished.
I eventually finished/got tired of building the walls, left some linteled holes for high wall windows, buttressed the long outer wall and declared the wall structure complete. Yay!
Little did I know, the real work had yet to begin, but that's another story for another day.
For more information on earthbag building please visit
http://www.okokok.org/cs-alison.php
http://www.greenhomebuilding.com/QandA/earthbagQandA.htm
http://www.calearth.org/cvillage/cvillage.htm
1300 rice sacks + 60 000lbs of sand + some barbed wire + A few extra odds and ends = 1 house.
Superadobe, or earthbag building, simply uses compacted earth (sand in my case) in feed or ice sacks as the structural and load bearing walls. The technique is not complicated and does not require any special expertise to construct, can be erected quickly and the materials needed to build the walls can usually be acquired at a very low cost.
How low?
I built our 600 sq foot earthbag house for just over 1000$ U.S. funds.
I had the land available for free (an unused snake of land beside my restaurant) and scavenged some of the materials from other buildings (toilets and sinks), but the rest of the materials I bought new, although at low cost, as I am in Thailand where things don't tend to cost as much as they do elsewhere.
The house is about 20 meters long, and a varied 4-5 meters in width, is made entirely from sandbags from foundation to wall tops and is covered with a sod and flower planted living roof.
I have never been considered handy- the go to guy for a "fix it" job, and as such encountered a lot of skepticism, some outright laughter and the occasional threat of divorce as I explained my plan and the benefits of living in "the mud hut" as my family had so kindly christened the earthbag project.
I started digging anyways. It took about a week to dig the foundation trench for the wall perimeter. A not entirely even, or level trench of 30-40 Cm's deep by a half meter wide. It was hard, sweaty work, and that finished (beautiful to me) hole in the ground steeled my resolve to keep the project moving. I bought 1500 hundred new rice sacks (about 200$), ordered 5 cubic meters of sand and set to work.
I shovel filled my first 10 bags and started heaving them ( holy crap, heavy heavy heavy) down to the end of the trench. After a few days I had completed my first course of bags, wrenched my back and almost broken my spirit. Wondering how I'd ever get this thing finished I grimly began a new day's work by filling some bags (now done doggy style through the legs) and began humping the first bag down the wall. Lift and rest, lift and rest, lift and slide and rest,slide slide slide and rest. Wait a minute, this wasn't so bad, these 80 lb bags could be quite easily slid across the slick surface of the previous course of bags. Maybe there was hope after all!
I laid three times the bags I had done the previous day while uttering only a fraction of the curses and dark mutterings that had kept onlookers well away during the first course of bags. Things were looking good!
I fell into a routine: filling bags, positioning the barbed wire used to stick courses of bags together, dragging full bags down the wall until in position, folding the open bag tops over the sides of the bags, flopping them into place atop the waiting barbed wire and tamping the placed bags by jumping (with my ample 110+kg body-down to a leaner 90kg by the end of the building) barefoot on the bags until they felt pretty firm. And repeat. And repeat. I aimed for about 40 bags placed a day, which doesn't sound like a lot, but tired me out plenty!
As the weeks became months I watched my earthbag walls growing with satisfaction and pride. I began really enjoying the work. It was very physical, but also quite meditative, as my mind would alternately wander or sometimes clear completely save for the attention needed to complete the tasks at hand.
The design was a work in progress. My roofing plans changed repeatedly after numerous failed small scale experiments, and I had no idea what the damn thing would look like when finished.
I eventually finished/got tired of building the walls, left some linteled holes for high wall windows, buttressed the long outer wall and declared the wall structure complete. Yay!
Little did I know, the real work had yet to begin, but that's another story for another day.
For more information on earthbag building please visit
http://www.okokok.org/cs-alison.php
http://www.greenhomebuilding.com/QandA/earthbagQandA.htm
http://www.calearth.org/cvillage/cvillage.htm
1 comments:
Hello!
My husband and I are just beginning to build an earth bag home on the island of Dominica in the Caribbean.
I was inspired reading your post. I am thinking we will start with a cob oven as a first project. (Or maybe MY project while my husband does the foundation.)
I'd love to see more pictures as you are able
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