2020 Holiday Letter
2020 was a weird year for us all. It certainly came with some trials for us, but also some adventures and victories. Here’s how it all went down.
The Finished Earthbag House Tour
After 4 summers and countless hours of labor, the earthag house was finished and moved into. Since then, it has been performing well! Here’s the video tour of the finished earthbag house.
2016 Holiday Letter
Dear Readers, Friends, and Loved Ones, Happy Holidays from Loja, Ecuador! When I wrote the first draft of this holiday letter, less than two weeks ago, I had no idea that a few days later I’d be on a flight to South America! Let me back up to the beginning of the year and…
Earthbag House Update: Work in 2016
We’re long overdue for an earthbag house update! In today’s post, I’ll give an overview of what Keith has been working on this year. In upcoming posts, I’ll dive into more detail about each aspect of the project. Last winter, Keith had a job up in North Dakota. While he worked up there, Lee (Keith’s…
Taking a Blogging Sabbatical
Do you ever go grocery shopping and then try to unload everything all at once so you don’t have to make multiple trips from the car to the house? You stagger up the steps, struggle at the doorway with all your bags and fumble around to find your keys while the heavy sacks cut into your wrists, restricting your…
2015 Holiday Letter
Dear Readers, As I write this, we’re in the final days of 2015. How was your year? I know for many of my loved ones, 2015 brought a large share of challenges. Difficult and costly projects, lost loved ones, health problems, hearts broken… For others, it was a year of joy and new beginnings. Weddings,…
Laser Leveling in the Earthbag House
There are a few key tools that Keith has used in the process of building the earthbag house which we have found extremely helpful and time-saving. One such tool is the laser level.
Filling the Earthbags
Just to clarify, the walls of the earthbag house have been completed! However, I thought you might enjoy some video footage of the process of building the walls. In this video clip, Keith is working by himself to fill the earthbags in place on the wall.
Earthbag Arches
One feature that Keith had designed into the earthbag house we are building is the arch. We have two arches in this house. The first arch is built into the support buttress on the north wall. Buttresses add strength to a straight wall and are required every 10 to 12 feet in earthbag homes with…
Earthbag Walls – DONE!
Well, after 7 months of mixing clay slip with screenings from the nearby rock quarry and pouring the mixture into sandbags left over from Hurricane Sandy, our bag-filling days are finally over! Yes, the earthbag walls—at least the earthbag part of them—are finished. Now we are covering them in papercrete and chicken wire and more…
Septic Tank!
One of the big milestones of building this house is the installation of the septic tank, which happened a couple of weeks ago. Here’s a photo of the tank in the ground with the leach field behind it:
Diddling Bags for the Earthbag House
Before we fill them with the earthbag mixture, we diddle the bags so that they make a better shape for the wall and the corners don’t stick out and mess up the papercrete and lime plaster that will later cover them. The typical way to diddle a bag is to fold in the corners and run…