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Earthbag building
Earthbag building blends the ancient technique
of building with earth, with modern materials, combining the
benefits of both.
Polypropylene bags, specially designed fertiliser bags, are
filled with sand or a clay-earth mix and laid in overlapping rows in
a similar fashion to bricks. The structure is then plastered, either using a standard
lime-cement mix or a natural clay plaster.
Earthbag building is also known as a "flexible
form rammed earth system" in that it incorporates a lot of the
advantages of rammed earth construction , but allows for much more
variety in shape and design without the expensive and complicated
formwork.
Earthbag building is similar to a variety of other earth building
techniques, but offers “more structural integrity than adobe, more
plasticity than rammed earth, and more speed in construction than
cob. Earthbag construction offers broad possibility for
ultra-low impact housing, especially in regions where timber,
grasses, cement, and fuel are scarce. … Earthbag building has been
chosen, too, for sites exposed to hurricanes and other extreme
weather.
Solid as the earth itself, it holds great thermal mass and cannot rot or be eaten by insects
and the use of sand or earthbag retaining walls to divert
floodwaters is ubiquitous [1]
The Earthbag system of construction is environmentally friendly,
using locally sourced materials where possible, including the soil
beneath one’s feet (whose cost will not rise in the future), to
create a durable, structurally-sound, non-toxic, inexpensive, low
embedded-energy, thermally and acoustically efficient structure that
has low material cost vs. labour cost ratio. This means that the social leg of the triple bottom line is
addressed – money is paid to communities not corporations.
[1] Hunter and Kiffmeyer. Earthbag building 2006 pp xi
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