Earthbag Building

Here we have the lovely Lyn (me) pounding some earthbags into shape around a window form during my Earth Building Workshop with Chris Magwood. It's harder than it looks, but I learned a whole lot! I have been reading Earthbag Building by Kaki Hunter and Donald Kiffmeyer, which is the absolute best book on the subject I have come accross. Basically if you have this book you can build your own house for almost nothing! It takes you step-by-step through every detail, including costs and where to get your equipment. It is written with humour, and is very easy to understand for beginner builders because it's filled with photographs and illustrations along the way. Building an earthbag house in Canada would require an straw bale insulation layer on the outside, which would then be covered with a cob mixture and plaster... so my partner and I are working with an architect to design such a thing. We'll let you know how that develops.

We have a huge variety of Natural/environmental building books in the store so come in and have a look!