Tiny House Design

Owen Geiger and Kelly Hart at the Earthbag Building Blog have been busy posting a lot of great detailed information about how to build earthbag structures over the last few months. I’ve been really enjoying their 3D drawings, descriptions, and learning the nitty gritty of how earthbag walls are really put together.

Earthbag construction is a type of earthen home construction that essentially involves filling bags (like sandbags) with dirt. The walls this method produces are comparable to adobe, cob, and rammed earth in thickness and thermal mass but earthbags seems to me to be a much faster way of building with dirt.

Here are some examples of the how-to posts you’ll find at the Earthbag Building Blog.

• Structural Mesh
• Estimating Costs
• Alternative Bond Beams for Straight Walls
• Alternative Bond Beam for Curved Structures
• Filling Bags to Capacity
• Using Scrap Metal for Bracing
• Corrugated Metal for Bond Beams and Wall Bracing
• Roofing Hold-downs
• Alternative Bond Beams and Lintels for Straight, Vertical Walls
• What Size Bag is Best?
• Using Sand Versus Tamped Soil
• Closing Ends of Earthbags

This is the kind of resource that really empowers people to invent their own housing solutiuons. Owen and Kelly, thanks for putting all this great information out there!

Image credit to Patti Stouter, Kelly Hart and Owen Geiger.

Owen Geiger is well known for his work with earthbag homes. If you’re not yet familiar with his work, his websites are definitely worth spending some time visiting. The house pictured below is a design for a simple low cost home Owen estimates would cost about $10 per square foot to build (shell only). At 846 square feet it’s quite a bit larger than most of the homes I post here but was such a good example of sustainable architecture I had to share it with you.  The real accomplishment of this design is that it is expected to be a virtually zero impact home. Read more about this design at Earthbag Plans.

Illustration credit to Owen Geiger.

I’m especially partial to low-cost housing solutions that push the envelope and demonstrate that a home doesn’t have to be expensive and extravagant to provide it’s owner security and happiness.

Owen Geiger recently posted an article on the Earthbag Building Blog that lists out the materials and cost for a 15-foot diameter earthbag home with a reciprocal pole roof covered with a layer of sod. If much of the work is done by the owner-builder and reclaimed and recycled materials are used the basic structure can be built for as low as $1000. It just seems to make a lot of sense and be truly sustainable architecture to use the dirt under our feet to build homes.

Earthbag Building Blog

Photo credit to earthbagbuilding.com.

Owen Geiger over at Earthbag House Plans has been busy. He has posted the preliminary designs for about 77 plans for earthbag homes available on his newest website.

An earthbag home is essentially a home made from the dirt under your feet. It’s scooped up and placed in bags like old grain bags or sandbags. They are then laid up like bricks and you can build strait walls, curved walls, and domes.

It’s probably the fastest and easiest way to build walls and the best part is that it’s as cheap as dirt. To learn more about building with earthbags visit Earth Bag Building. Here is a sample of what you’ll find:

Photo credit to the people at earthbagbuilding.wordpress.com and earthbagplans.wordpress.com.