wikisens Earthbag Homes

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Earthbag Homes
Over 70 percent of Americans cannot afford to own a codeenforced, contractorbuilt home. This has led to widespread interest in using natural materialsstraw, cob, and earthfor building homes and other buildings that are inexpensive, and that rely largely on labor rather than expensive and often environmentallydamaging outsourced materials.
Earthbag Building is the first comprehensive guide to all the tools, tricks, and techniques for building with bags filled with earthor earthbags. A reliable method for constructing homes,wikisens, outbuildings, garden walls and much more, this enduring, treefree architecture can also be used to create arched and domed structures of great beautyin any region, and at home, in developing countries, or in emergency relief work.
This profusely illustrated guide first discusses the many merits of earthbag construction, and then leads the reader through the key elements of an earthbag building:
With dedicated sections on costs, making your own specialized tools, and building code considerations, as well as a complete resources guide, Earthbag Building is the longawaited, definitive guide to this uniquely pleasing construction style.
Kaki Hunter and Donald Kiffmeyer have been involved in the construction industry for the last 20 years, specializing in affordable, lowtech, lowimpact building methods that are as natural as possible. They developed the "Flexible Form Rammed Earth Technique" of building affordably with earthbags and have taught the subject and contributed their expertise to several books and journals on natural building.
The book,Cheap Clarisonic Mia, with over 700 photos and illustrations, shows how to use sandbags and barbed wire, the materials of war, for peaceful purposes as the new invention known as Superadobe or earthbag, which can shelter millions of people around the globe as a temporary as well as permanent housing solution. This affordable, selhelp, sustainable, and disaster resistant structural system is a spin off from Khalili's presentation to NASA for habitat on the moon and Mars, which successfully passed rigorous tests for strict California earthquake building codes.
The basic construction method begins by digging a trench down to undisturbed mineral subsoil. In this is placed a foundation, consisting of a row of woven bags or tubes, filled with the material of choice. On top of these, one or more strands of fourpronged barbed wire are placed, which dig into the bag's weave and prevent slippage between it and subsequent bag rows or layers. On top of the barbed layer, the next row of bags (or tube) is placed (offset by half a bag width to form a staggered pattern), either to be prefilled with material and hoisted up, or filled "in place", particularly for the tube style Superadobe. The weight of this earth/sandfilled bag pushes down on the barbed wire strands, locking the bag in place on the row below. The same process continues layer upon layer, to form walls. A roof can be formed by gradually sloping the upper walls inward to form a dome, or traditional types of roof construction may be used instead.
To prevent UV damage to the fabric, it is necessary to cover the outer surfaces of the exposed bags with an opaque material. There are many possible choices for this material, including stucco, plaster or adobe. Waterproofing is also needed for nonvertical elements, in all but the driest climates, and can be accomplished by using additives in the bagfill material,or in the stucco or as an added layer on the outer surface. Some designers/builders use a plantedearth "living roof" ("greenroof") to top the structure, or more conventional framing and roof finishes may be placed atop earthbag walls.