Monday, March 28, 2011

Earthbag Construction

I added a new (small) section on Earthbag home construction here...

This was prompted by seeing a TV program on the home of Kelly and Rosanna Hart in Colorado.  Its an earthbag house that they constructed themselves over a three year period.  The house is beautifully done with with each room hand crafted for its purpose.


The home uses a lightweight volcanic rock for the bag fill in order to increase the insulation value.  I'm still not clear on what the actual R value of the walls/roof are -- anyone have a good source of information on this?
It would be nice to know how cold a climate this type of construction makes sense in.


The outer covering of the house (over the earthbags) is papercrete.  An interesting house to say the least.
Beautifully handcrafted interior.


Total cost of the house was $49,900 including land and a solar electric system!  Dirt cheap (sorry).

The EarthbagBuilding.com and the Earthbag Building book that are listed are both quite good  -- lots of hands on material.  The EarthbagBuilding.com website is run by Kelly Hart.

The TV program mentioned above is Offbeat America, season 3, episode 1 on The Travel Channel -- it has a nice 10 minute tour of the house.

Gary
 
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