Earthbag (rammed earth in a bag) building. I like.

I've been lurking around the Earthbag Building Blog, the blog arm of earthbagbuilding.com, for a while now and I the idea of earthbag building has seriously grown on me.

The basic idea is to take a common resource, dirt, tamp it down into a bag, and stack it into walls. Now the first image that I though of was of sandbag bunkers and levies, and thats basically the same thing. The difference between my, Vietnam era firebase, sandbag bunker and a earthbag home is the way the bags are packed and connected. Often times soil is packed in to make the bag as dense as possible and rows of bags are connected using barbed wire as "cement".

Once the bags are layed up, windows and doors framed (box frames are secured right onto the bags), and the roof built (by traditional trusses or earthbag domes), then an earthen plaster is applied to seal the bags and finish the walls. Earthen plaster is a reoccurring theme in sustainable building, namely because of its world wide ubiquity and its durability. You might remember a small discussion of earthen plaster in my post about strawbale building and how it provides a active vapor barrier that allows vapors to pass in an out of a structure without trapping them, which causes mold and mildew problems.

A completed earthbag structure is among the most durable in the realm of sustainable building, surviving almost all natural disasters or at least surpassing the survival rates of conventional methods. This makes for a impressive structure at a potentially $0 pricetag. Considering that foreign food aid comes in bag form, think rice and grain bags, the price tag of building these structures can be very low if not zero, excluding labor costs. The third world and emergency situation implications are tremendous. Currently earthbag buildings are being promoted in Haiti, which still lies in ruins after the January 2010 earthquake. The US Military has even offered workshops in Djibouti, to teach those who are interested how to build affordable shelter. Earthbags have also seen widespread adoption across the continent of Africa, and Middle Eastern countries, including Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

For those of you wondering about where you might find sandbags take a look here or here for ideas. A box of 1000, surplus GI, sandbags runs about $360, not bad considering the comparative cost of conventional building supplies.

Earthbags might be a new take on the rammed earth idea, but the idea itself is one of the oldest in the world. Rammed earth structures have been around since man figured out that earth is compactable. Here is a link to a rammed earth watch-tower, built in China, that dates back to the Han Dynasty (200's BC). My thinking here is pretty cliche, if it ain't broke.... So given that this building style has been around for thousands of years in one way, shape, or form, perhaps it deserves more attention from the modern home building community and sustainability activists. I'd love to see how this method of construction would survive Northeastern winters, and springs for that matter. If it turned out that it was a viable building style then I'd love to live in something so simply build, timelessly beautiful, and completely sustainable.

Appropedia, awesome wiki site that I just stumbled across.

Hello again!

Today I'm actually using my down time in a positive way by posting. While browsing my rss feeds on Google Reader I came across a link to this website; Appropedia.

Appropedia is a knowledge sharing wiki site based around sustainable living, which is right up my alley! Within five minutes of link clicking I was able to find information about a range of things from induction heating to composting. They have a lot of pages that are even loosely based around moral and philosophic questions, i.e. small houses, and the use of barbed wire.

That is all on this post but I strongly suggest you browse for a little while on this site and see what you come up with. Find something cool? Why not post a link in the comments" section and share with my readers and I?

Dan Phillips and Creating Houses from Recycled Materials

I just found this excellent video, from TEDxHouston, of a talk given by a man named Dan Phillips on the creation of homes from recycled and re-purposed materials. I definitely thought that it was going to be meat and potatoes on home building and how to use/find materials to use. Boy was I wrong!! This, most excellent, talk is as much about philosophy of home construction, and how we live within our homes/communities, as it is anything else.

Mr. Phillips discusses basic philosophy in the terms of how we seek, build, finance, and live in our homes. A really interesting way to approach things indeed. He breaks it down into two major ways of looking at homes based on Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of the Apollonian and Dionysian. Now Nietzsche wasn't the first to discuss these two in opposition to each other, I think that was probably Plutarch, but Nietzsche went the extra mile to oppose the two diametrically. The Apollonian being the ordered, the ideal, the logical, the thinking, the appreciation for visual and tactile things, whereas the Dionysian is the chaotic, the intoxicated state, the instinctual, the feeling, the appreciation for reality (organic structure?). Applied to modern homes you have the Apollonian McMansion, and the Dionysian [name your organic/sustainable/recycled home design ethos].

Within this framework Phillips breaks down the ideas behind his work and why it is important. The largest driving force, within the home construction industry, is the waste created by the consumer. Formally waste was all over, the industrial revolution had a dirty, wasteful start (think your turn of the century saw mill or steel furnace), now we are presented with a industrial process that is certainly wasteful in terms of pollution but not necessarily use of raw materials. Modern mills and plants that make materials for use in home construction have the process of getting the most out of a raw material to a T. If you have ever been present at, or watched a video of, a modern saw mill in action you will have undoubtedly noticed the advancements made in production of dimensional lumber. Computer technology has allowed a mill to calculate the most efficient use of a log within milliseconds and then cuts it accordingly, gone are the days of cutting 2x4's from one log then 4x4's the next and so on. The problem of waste lies with the consumer.

Phillips gives an example that I, myself, have been guilty of, turning away a piece of lumber because it is somewhat warped. Another example is throwing out the off cuts of pieces of lumber and not using them for other projects and applications. Yet another is replacing any piece of a home just because of a minor imperfection that changes or, in the eyes of most, depreciates its value. This is as bad an example of wanton over consumption as any. Years ago people wouldn't waste anything they bought when building a home or making anything in particular. Today we throw away most of what we buy.

Mr. Phillips believes that a return, or more like a shift, towards the Dionysian side of life, is required in order to conceive of and create a less wasteful way of life. Mr. Phillips, you are preaching to the choir. This shift from an ordered way of building would allow us to get in touch with a more organic and natural expression of our wants and needs. His ideas are quite provocative and I strongly urge you to take aside for a few minutes and watch his talk. Without further diatribe, here is Mr Phillips.



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