Earthbag Building

Being able to set up your own shelter in the wild is important, but so is the shelter you dwell in on a daily basis.  Lately my girlfriend and I have been thinking a lot about what kind of house we would build when it becomes a viable option for us.  The factors that are most important to us are: building costs, heating/insulation efficiency, a passive solar design, and preferably a greenhouse. With these in mind we set about researching different methods of building houses and stumbled upon earthbag building, using sandbags filled with local natural material  in place of bricks.  Earthbags homes can be assembled easily and are surprisingly sturdy.  The Earthbag website explains one of the many benefits of this building method:  "Earthbags have the tremendous advantage of providing either thermal mass or insulation, depending on what the bags are filled with. When filled with soil they provide thermal mass, but when filled with lighter weight materials, such as crushed volcanic stone, perlite, vermiculite, or rice hulls, they provide insulation. The bags can even act as natural non-wicking, somewhat insulated foundations when they are filled with gravel."   This building method seemed to satisfy all of our needs, but we expected the houses built this way would be pretty plain, box shaped, and small. We were very surprised to see some examples.

http://www.structure1.com/html/earthbag.htm

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Green-Homes/2005-10-01/Earthbag-Construction.aspx

http://www.logement-durable-afrique.info/?report-from-canada

There are many different guides to DIY Earthbag building online.  We came across a website with plans and schematics for different designs, some even using recycled materials for certain parts of the home.The plans were created by Own Geiger, and the website is Natural Building Blog.  We even found a plan for a partially underground Earthbag building with a greenhouse.

http://naturalbuildingblog.com/solar-pit-house/

http://naturalbuildingblog.com/solar-pit-house/

Most of us don't have the option to buy our own home right now, let alone build it.  But it's nice to know there are low-cost high-efficiency building methods out there when the time comes, and that your own house doesn't have to look like a clone of the one next to it.