MEDIA

Click on image to buy from Customflix.com Building with Bags: How We Made Our Experimental Earthbag/Papercrete House 1 1/2 hr. DVD produced by Kelly Hart.We wanted to build an environmentally sensitive and aesthetically pleasing home at a moderate price. We chose to create earthbag domes covered with papercrete (recycled paper combined with cement and sand). This honest DVD documents details of the construction, insights gained, and the ups and downs (literally!) of the building process. Several other earthbag homes are also shown. For more information about the house see Photogallery & Description of Our House or Construction Details of Our House . To view a streaming video intoduction to this DVD click here.

Click on image to buy from Amazon.com Earthbag Building : The Tools, Tricks and Techniques by Kaki Hunter, Donald Kiffmeyer, 2004. Earthbag Building is a comprehensive guide to all the tools, tricks, and techniques for building with bags filled with earth. Having been introduced to sandbag construction by the renowned Nader Khalili in 1993, the authors developed this "Flexible Form Rammed Earth Technique" over the last decade. A reliable method for constructing homes, outbuildings, garden walls and much more, this enduring, tree-free architecture can also be used to create arched and domed structures of great beauty. 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: Special design considerations; Foundations, walls and floors; Electrical, plumbing and shelving; Lintels, windows and door installations; Roofs, arches and domes; Exterior and interior plasters. There are also dedicated sections on costs, making your own specialized tools, and building code considerations, as well as a complete resource guide. Kaki Hunter and Donald Kiffmeyer have been involved in the construction industry for the last 20 years, specializing in affordable, low-tech, low-impact 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. For a more detailed review of this book written by Kelly Hart see this page. Earthbag Building is available as a downloadable ebook for $29.95 from this link.

Click on image to buy from Amazon.com Building with Earth: A Guide to Flexible-Form Earthbag Construction by Paulina Wojciechowska, 2001. This is the first book published about earthbag building, and still one of the best. Unfortunately it has gone out of print, but is still available used from various sellers at Amazon. My earthbag/papercrete house is featured on the cover, and as a case study, and images of it are sprinkled throughout the text. Paulina visited me while I was building it and helped with the construction some. She studied with Nader Khalili at CalEarth, so is grounded in his training, but is not bound by his perspective. This book touches on most of the relevant facits of earthbag building, and I give it a high recommendation.

Click on image to buy from Amazon.com Emergency Sandbag Shelter by Nader Khalili, 2008. The book shows how to use sandbags and barbed wire, the materials of war, for peaceful purposes. Earthbags can shelter millions of people around the globe as a temporary as well as permanent housing solution. This affordable, self-help, 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. This book along with a small library of films and kits can guide anyone to learn and teach how to build a home or community. Click on image to buy from Amazon.com Ceramic Houses and Earth Architecture: How to Build Your Own by Nader Khalili, 1996. This book shows how to build vaults, domes and arches with adobe blocks. It then goes on to suggest how to actually fire the structure like pottery, with a glaze. It is a fiscinating concept that has seen little use, partly because the firing process can be rather polluting. This book has been updated to discuss the SuperAdobe building method of building with earthbags.. I recommend this book to everyone who is interested in alternative building methods. Click on image to buy from Amazon.com Sidewalks on the Moon by Nader Khalili, 2002. With the moon as a metaphor, Khalili takes us from the poetic moon of the ghettos of his childhood to the scientific moon of his presentations to NASA for lunar base construction using on-site earth and ceramics. He chronicles his own transformation renouncing his successful architecture practice and voyaging into the desert, ultimately firing and glazing the first Ceramic Houses. Inspired by the mystic poetry of Rumi, and the unity of the universal elements of earth, water, air, and fire, with his technical background he presents his proposals for earth and ceramics lunar bases to NASA.

Click on image to buy from Amazon.com The House That Jill Built: A Woman's Guide to Home Building by Judy Ostrow and Karen Leffler, 2005. Millions of women are already learning the basics of do-it-yourself and getting in tune with the empowering nature of power tools. Allison Kennedy, a woman who built an earthbag house all by herself after her boyfriend left her with a concrete foundation, is one of the featured stories. The House That Jill Built is perfect for women of all skill levels, from the experienced do-it-her-selfer to the woman who doesn't know the difference between a stud finder and a palm sander, to the woman who is looking to move on to more complex or large-scale projects. Sharing women's real-life experiences in creating their own dream homes, The House that Jill Built is a groundbreaking guide to the process as well as a collection of women's real-life home-building experiences, complete with before and after photos and drawings, advice from experts, safety precautions, and a comprehensive section of how-to tips, including a tool guide. Chapters highlight success stories, such as the design and construction of one woman's desert dream house to another's tropical paradise nestled up north. After reading these personal stories, every woman will feel motivated to pick up the hammer and go for it.

PLANS Baggins' Burrow Kelly Hart, Designer This is a 2 bedroom, 2 story, 1230 sf house that is very compact and efficient. It is designed to be dug into a south-facing hill, or to be bermed substantially on the north side. A large south-facing living area with vaulted cieling merges into the dining area and attached solar greenhouse. The bedrooms, bathroom and pantry are on the north side. An airlock entry provides space for coats and shoes. The curved walls and cieling gently embrace the occupants with a cozy and rustic elegance. The material and design choices are easy on both the earth and the pocketbook. This particular passive solar design should be extremely efficient, requiring very little energy for backup heating and cooling. The basic structure is earthbags, with the vertical walls composed of two columns of earthbags, tied together with wire. The inner bags would be filled with local soil from the site, providing considerable thermal mass. The outer column of bags, including those for the roof, would be filled with an insulating material, such as crushed volcanic rock or perlite. A natural tree with several uplifted branches holds a steel hoop aloft, which in turn supports both the dome skylight and the many poles that radiate out from the center as rafters. The bags would be plastered both inside and out with stabalized earthen plaster, papercrete or stucco, leaving the natural rafter poles exposed on the inside. Some of the interior walls would be natural stones for their beauty and thermal mass. The floor could be adobe, flagstone, bricks or pavers for durability and more thermal mass. This structure would require minimal foundation work, since a rubble trench foundation down to the frost level is all that is required (no cement). For more information about this plan, and many others, visit our sister site www.dreamgreenhomes.com, where you will find a wide range of plans for sustainable homes, greenhouses, small buildings, garages, and food storage space for sale. Dream Green Homes is a consortium of outstanding architects and designers, who have pooled their talent and expertise for your benefit.

Photogallery and description of Kelly and Rosana Hart's Earthbag/Papercrete House click on image to enlarge Click on image to enlarge This is our first experimental earthbag dome. The interior diameter is 14 feet and the dome stands about 16 feet high. At first we tried filling the bags with the fine sand that it is built upon, but when we were partly done, the dome fell in because the sand couldn't hold the shape. Then we filled the bags with crushed volcanic rock (scoria) that provides better insulation and holds its shape much better. The arch over the doorway was created with a wooden form that was later removed. We kept the dome tarped most of the time until we papercreted the exterior. We did this to keep the sunlight off the bags because the UV will eventually destroy the bags. Here is the same dome as above, with joists in place for the loft and with the arch form still supporting the entrance arch. The joists are simply resting on the bags and blocked up where necessary to maintain the level. Bags are then stacked between the joists and on top of them to lock them into place. Having the loft there made the structure much more sturdy as I continued to build. Two strands of four-point barbed wire were placed between each course of bags to help hold them in place and to withstand any tendency for the dome to bulge outward with pressure from above. We also placed a piece of baling twine under each bag which would be tied around three bags eventually. This provided more structural integrity and created a positive grip for any final plaster material. Click on image to enlarge This is the beginning of the large elliptical dome that became our kitchen and living room. It measures approximately 30 feet on the long axis and 20 feet on the short axis. Because we are building on sand with excellent drainage and no problem of frost upheaval, there is no foundation other than a pad of 6 to 8 inches of the crushed volcanic rock (scoria). You can see the pile of scoria in the background, and a large wagon wheel in the foreground that will be use to support a circular window opening. Click on image to enlarge Because of the elliptical shape, this dome required a rigid pole framework to help support the second story. I would not recommend building anything but a circular dome after this experience, because otherwise the forces are just not balanced enough. You see the large arch form for the six-foot wide doorway. The house is a passive solar design, so we needed large openings to let in the sunlight. After several failures and much experimenting, we devised a double bag technique to create such a large arch. Double, side by side, bags are used for columns at every doorway in the house. Click on image to enlarge Here I am applying a coating of papercrete to the outside of the large dome. I did this as soon as I could to protect the bags. Thermal pane glass was embedded in the papercrete on the outside over all of the circular windows. Click on image to enlarge This is the papercrete tow mixer that was used to mix most of the papercrete. An invention of Mike McCain, the tow mixer is an amazing machine. It is made from a car rear end, a metal stock tank, a lawnmower blade and a few other parts. To make the papercrete, water is filled to within about 6 inches of the top, sand is added if desired, dry paper of virtually any description is added, and one bag of portland cement thrown in. One slow trip driving around the block produces a thick slurry that is total mush. This is drained through a sieve to eliminate the excess water, and then applied to the building. One mixer load yields between three and four wheelbarrows full of papercrete. Click on image to enlarge On the left is the 16 foot interior diameter bedroom dome, and on the right is part of the large dome. Between them is the connecting portion of the house under construction. The back (north) bag wall is a section of a sphere that is braced into place with the rafters for the southern roof/wall. Other braces within the attic space help hold the shape. Click on image to enlarge This is the southern aspect of the house after the final papercrete stucco was applied. The section of roof between the domes is covered with metal roofing and supports an array of eight photovoltaic panels. (That's why we needed a straight surface.) Solar water heating panels will be mounted below them. Beneath this roof is a bay of windows that extends outward to create a greenhouse space. Click on image to enlarge This view from the north shows the earthbag vault entryway/mudroom with its bell tower. The mound in the foreground is a completely bermed pantry that is accessible inside, from the kitchen. On top of the large dome are two air vents and a stove pipe. There are also three inlet air vents elsewhere in the dome. Click on image to enlarge This view of the back of the house shows how well it fits into the landscape. The curved shapes blend in with the mountains in the far distance. Click on image to enlarge This shows the main entrance onto a landing, with the option of going up to the loft or down to the main level. Lots of natural wood was used to finish the interior components. An old wood stove for back-up heat is visible in the foreground Click on image to enlarge The flight of steps lead up to the loft over the kitchen. The lodge poles that help support the dome's shape can be seen with the final coat of lime plaster that was troweled on between them. The horizontal band of logs between each lodge pole was positioned to brace the structure rigidly when a steel cable was tightened around at the same level. Click on image to enlarge This is a view of Kelly's office space in the loft over the kitchen. Because the walls angle in rather sharply, the standing floor space is diminished. A built-in counter around most of the wall provides desk and equipment space, with lots of storage beneath it. Click on image to enlarge This is looking straight up from near the wood stove. You get almost a teepee feeling from the shape and the lodge poles. The two air vents are sealed with tether balls inflated to just the right size to fit snugly into the pipes. Long handles are attached to the balls to insert and remove them. Click on image to enlarge This is the view from the landing down into the living room. One of our dogs is standing on the flagstone set into the adobe floor. The rest of the floor in the large dome is poured adobe that was scored with a rocklike pattern. This is a classic passive solar arrangement, with lots of south-facing glass and dark colored thermal mass on the floor to absorb the heat. A window seat can be seen behind the dog, under the wagon wheel window. This seat was formed during construction with earthbags. Click on image to enlarge This is looking toward the large dome from the greenhouse in the connecting space. The tomatoes are happy. The wall next to the planter is papercrete stucco that was troweled smooth. A natural vertical log supports the horizontal beam that supports the entire south side of the attic. Click on image to enlarge A view of our shower stall made with natural local stone, tile and wood. This was a little tricky because of all the odd angles in the space, but it works. Eventually there will be more rockwork around a solar hot tub in the green house area, which will serve as more thermal mass that will be heated by the sun. Click on image to enlarge This shows the curved stairway in the bedroom that leads to a small loft. The stairs are made of earthbags filled with sand, and covered with papercrete. The coloration of the interior space was accomplished by brushing a small amount of latex paint mixed with lots of water onto the papercrete walls. This basically stains the wall without interfering with the breathablity through the wall. Click on image to enlarge Here is the office space carved out of the attic area in the middle section. The bag wall can be seen on the left, and the wood-framed wall is on the right. Wooden braces that help secure the shape can be seen near the top of the photo.

ASPECTS OF SUSTAINABLE ARCHITECTURE IN KELLY & ROSANA HART'S EARTHBAG AND PAPERCRETE HOUSE GENERAL DESIGN A small circular dome and a large elliptical dome connected together with a section of a sphere on the north and a planar roof and wall on the south. This requires minimal use of wood, concrete and steel for construction. CONSTRUCTION METHOD There is no concrete foundation; the house rests on a pad of scoria laid directly over the natural sand. Successive courses of polypropylene bags filled with sand (on the bottom few courses), and scoria (on the rest of the courses) are piled in an overlapping (brick-like) fashion to form the domes. Between each course are two strands of 4-point barbed wire. Each section of the house has a loft framed with conventional lumber. Some of the domes have poles arranged on the second story to help support the shape of the dome. The earthbags are covered initially, both inside and out, with papercrete (recycled paper, with a small amount of Portland cement). The final layer is either a lime plaster (lime, silica sand and white Portland cement), or papercrete with sand added. In some cases the final coat of papercrete has been stained with latex paint thinned way down with water. All of the walls and roof areas remain breathable (except the central metal roof under the solar equipment). Floors are poured adobe, flagstone, tile, papercrete, wood. (This house was built in a county that has not adopted the Uniform Building Code. The usual plumbing and electrical codes were required, and inspected for.) HEATING Primarily passive solar, with wood, propane and electricity as backups. COOLING Substantially bermed into the earth on the north side. Considerable thermal mass on the interior. VENTING Most windows do not open, so air tubes are employed at strategic locations to promote natural convection of air. These tubes are closed with rubber tether balls inflated to fit the tube. NATURAL MATERIALS Sand, adobe, flagstone, rock, lime, scoria, parts of trees. RECYCLED MATERIALS Glass, wagon wheels, culvert couplers, misprinted rice bags, milled lumber, paper, sink. NEW MATERIALS Barbed wire, Portland cement, some milled lumber, polyethylene sheeting, miscellaneous fasteners, paint, linseed oil, tile, chicken wire. NUMBER OF BAGS USED About 5,000 bags altogether, including for the small guest cabin. SQUARE FOOTAGE House, 1300 approximately; storage cabin, 150 approximately. TIME TO BUILD Approximately 3 years of owner/builder time at about 30 hours a week. No hired labor. Occasional friends' help. R-VALUE OF THE WALLS Estimated at R-40. ELECTRICITY Both grid power and photovoltaic power are provided. The solar operates the refrigerator/freezer, clothes washing machine, most of the lights, and misc. small appliances. HOT WATER Solar water heating panels (not yet installed) will provide most of the hot water for a hot tub and domestic water. Propane is used as a back-up. GREENHOUSE The central greenhouse provides food and heat for the house. Excess heat is vented out the hinged roof of the greenhouse. CONSTRUCTION COSTS: CATEGORIES COST COST PER SQUARE FOOT Sandbags $1138 Scoria $4484 Cement $911 Lumber $4552 Miscellaneous $4632 Fees, permits, licenses $465 Excavation $1400 Plumbing $2459 Electrical $1652 Windows $1539 BASIC HOUSE TOTAL $23,232 $16 Solar electrical system $8223 Major appliances $3514 OVERALL HOUSE TOTAL $34,969 $24 Land & site preparation $15,000 GRAND TOTAL $49,969

An Amazing Experiment These are the two connected earthbag/papercrete domes. I was recently given the opportunity to help demolish an earthbag house project that had been started in our community. The owner/builder had sold the property and the new owner wanted the land cleared. At first the owner wanted to have heavy excavation equipment come in and just push it all over and haul the debris away. I offered to help carefully take the structure apart so we could recycle some of the materials and learn something about how easy it might be to tear down such construction. There were three domes to be removed, two of them connected and the third freestanding. These domes were constructed similarly to my house: polypropylene earthbags were filled with crushed volcanic rock (scoria); the courses of bags had barbed wire between them and the bags were tied to each other with poly baling twine. Papercrete was applied to both the interior and exterior surfaces. Additionally, rebar stakes had been driven through several courses of bags in many locations. This is the freestanding dome, before demolition. The freestanding dome was a rather lacy affair, almost a gazebo, with four arched openings and several circular windows. The builder had experienced difficulty in erecting this delicate building (it had collapsed several times in the process), so at my suggestion he had wrapped the columns between the arches with two-inch chicken wire mesh before applying the papercrete, in order to stiffen the building and make it stronger. This gazebo-like dome was built on a layer of about ten inches of scoria, which I started to collect for reuse. As I was digging around the base of the structure, it occurred to me that an interesting experiment would be to dig out from under a section of the wall and see how much could be undercut before the wall began to collapse. The section of wall I chose to undermine was about 15 feet long, between two arched openings. I dug alternately from one side and then the other, completely removing the scoria from underneath the wall. Like my house, there was no other foundation to this building. The foundation of this 15' section of earthbag/papercrete wall was almost completely undermined, and the wall is still completely intact! After I had cleared about a yard in from both sides, with nothing happening to the building, I was rather surprised. After all, this is just bags of rock stacked on top of each other, amounting to an estimated four tons of material. There were no cracks in the plaster nor sagging of the wall. I dashed home to get a camera to record the events, and continued undermining the wall, being careful to keep out of harm's way if it should suddenly collapse. The more I dug the more amazed I became. When the wall section was precariously balanced on about one foot of scoria in the middle of the wall, and nothing had happened except one bag had fallen out onto the ground below, I snapped the picture that can be seen here. This is the same section of wall after much banging with an axe and hammer. If anyone had any doubts about the strength and integrity of this system of building, this experiment should allay those concerns. Earthbag building of this sort can be STRONG! Eventually, as I continued to dig out from under the wall, it simply began to hinge downward from a point about ten feet up, above the arches. The wall itself showed no signs of falling apart. In fact when the owner tried to break it apart with an axe and a sledge hammer, he finally gave up and decided to have the backhoe tear into it! The fact that it was surrounded with the wire mesh and that he had used twice the amount of Portland cement as usual in the papercrete mix are factors contributing to the phenomenal strength.

The Creation of a Glorieta I accepted a wonderful challenge when I was asked to facilitate the creation of some sort of monument with about thirty people attending the Second Vittachi International Youth Gathering, held in Crestone, Colorado in early August of 2003. The expected attendees were from all over the world: the Philippines, Zimbabwe, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Nepal, China, Canada, Niger, Lebanon, South Africa, Cambodia, Indonesia, Cameroon, Poland, Jordan, New Zealand, Australia, UK, Brazil, and the USA. Unfortunately, not all of these countries were represented because of problems in getting visas from the U.S. government. My challenge was to imagine a project where people from such diverse backgrounds could cooperate in building something that would require little specialized skill and could be accomplished over the course of just a few days. The place where part of this conference was to be held was a large parcel of mostly undeveloped land known as Atalanta. A tent structure would provide shade for some of the events, while others would occur under the Cottonwood trees along a small creek. I chose a site right at the base of a lovely symmetrical hill to build what we decided to call the "Glorieta," which means an arbor or shade structure in Spanish. Our Glorieta would be a sort of glorified gazebo that would emerge directly from the soil beneath our feet. Since the conference was about sustainability, I felt it wasimportant to honor this by using local materials as much as possible. With my experience in building with earthbags (recycled misprinted polypropylene rice bags), I knew that it was possible to fill these bags with the fine sand that the entire hill was composed of, and create an actual building. As long as the bags of sand were stacked vertically, rather than inclined as for a dome, the structure should be plenty stable. Part of my plan was to terrace the hill in such a way that the soil removed in the excavation would be used to fill the bags. This terracing would then create a natural amphitheater, with the Glorieta serving as a sort of stage area for performances. To accentuate this function, the Glorieta has buttress wings that open out toward the amphitheater and an opening wide enough to accommodate a small musical ensemble that would be in full view of an audience. Another function of the Glorieta is to provide a shady place to socialize, convene classes or workshops, or simply be contemplative. For this reason I designed built-in benches both inside and outside the circular structure. The shade would come from a conical roof framed with small cottonwood trees that had died from last year's drought, and even smaller branches that would be woven around these rafters. This roof structure would be self-supporting, with the small ends of the trees wired to a central steel hoop, and the larger ends pinned to the earthbag wall with lengths of steel rebar. Barbed wire embedded between each course of bags serves to keep the circular wall from expansion from the outward force of the rafters. At any given time there were about a dozen people working on the project, and this was only for about three hours each morning, for a total of five days. One of the bigger challenges was to coordinate this many people to work smoothly as a team. I divided up the tasks so that some cleared weeds and brush, while others dug sand and filled bags, cut wire or twine (to hold the eventual chicken wire for the stucco), placed the bags and tamped them flat. It was a very industrious group effort, and it was amazing to see the structure actually rise out of the dust! It became apparent after a couple of days work that the Glorieta was not going to be complete by the end of our allotted time. We actually did get all of the bag walls erected, but did not finish the roof nor get much of the stucco up. This stucco was made from the same onsite sand, mixed with some Portland cement. Only one of the earthbag benches that serve as retaining walls for the terraces was created. I thought that we would need to dig much more soil than this to fill all of the bags. While most of the effort of building the Glorieta was very hard work, there was also an atmosphere of much joking, singing, and chatting. Lots of fun was generated by many successful attempts at walking across the horizontal beam suspended about seven feet above the ground at the main entrance to the Glorieta. Towards the end of our time there was a satisfying moment when all the participants had an opportunity to embed a rock, shell or other personal item brought from their country for this purpose. This will be a permanent memento of the wonderful event that spawned the Glorieta. Another moment that generated some excitement was when we removed the wooden arch form to reveal the self-supporting earthbag arch over the back entrance to the space; this always seems like gravity-defying magic. The Glorieta project was only one of many facets of this conference, but several people told me that for them it was a high point. Physically creating a functional and aesthetically interesting structure out of little more than the dirt under your feet and a few small dead trees is a memory that these folks will keep for some time.

Filling the Bags with Rice Hulls I have recently become familiar with the use of rice hulls as a material to build with. These unasumming little bits of of debris that are often discarded have found new value as insulation in wood-framed houses and as filler for earthbag projects. They are a durable and renewable material that will not easily burn or decay. They are reported to be about R-3 per inch as insulation, and will not harbor mold or fungus because they don't retain enough moisture to do so. All of this is without any added chemicals...a totally natural product that is often given away. The states where rice mills accumulate hulls include Lousiana, Texas, Arkansa, Missouri, Mississippi, Florida, and California. The hulls only weigh about 9 pounds per cubic foot, so weight is not much of issue in transporting them. They pack into a stable shape when mildly compressed; once they settle into a wall cavity or are packed into an earthbag, they are not shape-shifters. Don Stephens has been experimenting with rice hulls in bags. He says, "I thought you might find this photo of interest...it's the bag-walled studio I'm mentoring/assisting the owners in building here in Spokane. The bags are just filled with packed, dry rice hulls and they are load-bearing, holding up the insulated bondbeam at the top and the poured-in-ricehull-insulated roof, which will end up planted, over its salvaged-carpet covered Mel-Rol waterproofing. There's been no settlement since construction and it feels SOLID, walking on the roof. The exterior will be stuccoed with slightly-stabilized cob and the interior will be earth plastered. The subfloor is of ricehull-liteclay, for insulation, and will be topped with cob-adobe.... : ) " There is more information about various tests that have been performed with rice hulls as insulation at www.esrla.com/shotgun , slides 24-39. Also the issue #47 (Fall 2004) of The Last Straw has a lengthy article. Also, the complete text of Paul Oliver's article about the Rice Hull House is available here. If any one is interested, my company supplied the hulls for Don Stephens project. Contact jpereiraATrice-hulls.com.

]