Earthbag Walls – DONE!

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…

Earthbag House FAQs

Earthbag House FAQs

Here are some questions we’ve received about our earthbag house project, and our answers to them. We’ll add more as the questions come in. Feel free to contact us and ask anything you want! General Questions About Our Project Q: What state are you building in? Answer: We are building the earthbag house in Eastern Kansas—an…

Papercrete Tow Mixer

Papercrete Tow Mixer

Last year, making batches of papercrete involved filling a barrel with newspaper and water, and grinding it up by hand using a drill with a special attachment.  CLICK HERE to see last year’s post about it. Using that procedure, we could only make relatively small batches of papercrete, and mixing it up that way always made…

Cistern Part II

Cistern Part II

A few weeks back I wrote a post about the rainwater cistern we’re building.  We’ve made a lot of progress since then!  My newest video shows the cistern from dream to (almost) done! This cistern, made of earthbags like the rest of the house, will be the primary source of water for the house.  We’ll…

Ground Insulation

Protecting the House from Cold and Moisture One of the major things to consider when building a house is how to protect it from moisture and temperature extremes.  Here’s a video I filmed (a couple of months back now) on how Keith protected the foundation of the earthbag house from the elements using natural and reused building…