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…

Earthbag House Project: Where We Left Off for the Winter

Earthbag House Project: Where We Left Off for the Winter

Many of my friends and readers who followed our earthbag house build last summer have asked, “So, how much did you get done before winter?” The short answer is “Lots, but not as much as we’d hoped.” In this post I’ll share our final projects up until we wrapped things up just before Thanksgiving of…

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…

Cistern

Cistern and Utility Room The most unusual and complex part of the earthbag house is the utility room, containing a 3,000 gallon rainwater cistern.  This room is the center of operations from which the electricity, sewer and water supply will be controlled.  It is also recessed into the ground with double-thick walls below ground level,…

Earthbag Mixture

Earthbag Mixture This being an earthbag house, one of the primary tasks involved in building it is making the mixture to put into the earthbags. We start out with the piles of clay that have been dug up around the building site.  My father-in-law, Lee, made mud pits–like kiddie pools–with boards and plywood and tarps, and…

Gravel Walls

The Walls are Coming! I’m so excited to be past the trenching and foundation stage and working on the actual walls!  We’ve hired some helpers to come out during the week, and on the weekends sometimes Denise and Jeff come out and may bring friends to help as well.  Thanks to the additional hands, things are moving…