2016 Holiday Letter

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 Arches

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!

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…