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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.
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Click on image to buy from Amazon.com |
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Click on image to buy from Amazon.com |
Home Work: Handbuilt Shelter by Lloyd Kahn, 2004. I have rarely been this enthusiastic about a book, and not just because I am in it! My earthbag/papercrete house is featured in a two-page spread. Ever since his first publication of Shelter in 1973 (which I also contributed to), Lloyd has been collecting imagery and stories for this eventual sequel. With Home Work, Lloyd has gone beyond the glory of his earlier work in many ways. Not only does it seem more comprehensive, but it is almost entirely in color. This is a sumptuous coffee table book that will likely not spend much time on the table, since it is so intriguing you just want to pick it up and browse through it. Every page is chock full of fun, unusual, lyrical, quaint, artistic, humble, elegant, practical, colorful, whimsical, well-crafted, funky, traditional, and outlandish buildings that were lovingly built by the hands of those who reside there. All of this is presented with Lloyd's casual style of layout and commentary that is reminiscent of a scrap book. Many of the photos are actually collages of several exposures spliced together to create expansive murals. Flipping through the pages of Home Work will take you back to the early days of hippie huts and forward to the cutting edge of natural building technology. The builders themselves are portrayed as lovingly as their buildings, with many profiles of fine craftsmen and women sprinkled throughout. In fact, the book begins by featuring the work of ten artisans who represent some of the best in this tradition of owner-builders. Then a whole slew of other specific homes are displayed in such a way that the lifestyle of their occupants is embedded directly within the imagery. This book depicts far more than architecture; it shows entire ways of life.
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Click on image to buy from Amazon.com |
karacadir A couple conduct regular workshops in sustainable building with earthbags in San Migel de Allende, Mexico.
naturalhomes.org lists workshops from around the world that relate to earthbags.
calearth.org Nader Khalili's earthbag works.
okokok.org Kaki Hunter and Donald Kiffmeyer, the authors of Earthbag Building, have assembled a very informative site that is mostly about earthbag building.
gypsyfarm This family in Georgia has been building a hybrid house of earthbags, ferrocement, poleframe, and strawbale for several years. Their website chronicles their experience in thoughts and photos taken over the years. It is extensive, detailed, revealing and personal...a very enjoyable browse!
earthlodge shows the evolution of an earthbag building project.
earthhandsandhouses.org the construction of Paulina Wojciekowska's earthbag dome project in Poland. is shown under projects/sandbags...
caicosdream show Doni Kiffmeyer and Kaki Hunter working on an earthbag project.
midpines.us a series of construction photos with captions about building an earthbag home in the Sierras of California.
icbo code central article outlining the chronology and results of testing done on Nader Khalili's superadobe system of building.
calearth.org/Emerg This two-page PDF file outlines Nader Khalili's approach to building an emergency shelter.
archearth.com pictures and description of an earthbag "Sound Temple" in Thailand.
sarpy.com features a state by state list of vendors of polypropylene and burlap earthbags.
Regular & Misprint Bags:
Agriculture Bags MFG., Inc.
C.H.K. Manufacturing, Inc.
960 98th Ave.
Oakland, CA 94603
Tel. 510-632-5637
Fax 510-632-2056
Contact - Jeff Kuo
Innpack, LLC
www.innpack.com
Memphis, TN
Contact: Nina Sanders
1-800-622-3695 Ext. 102
Polytex Fiber Corp
www.polytex.com
Houston, TX
1-800-628-0034
Contact: Denny Smith
Bags & Tubes:
Berg Bag Company
410 Third Ave. North
Minneapolis, MN 55401
1-800-658-7201
Central Bag Company
www.centralbagcompany.com
Kansas City, MO
1-816-471-0388
Contact: Chris Klimek
Fulton Pacific Packaging Co.
www.fultonpacific.com
1-800-521-1414
Contact: Rett Schuler
MaxKatz Bag Co.
P.O. Box 1666
Indianapolis, IN 46206-1666
1-800-225-3729
Contact: Don Katz, ext. 3666
NYP Corporation
805 East Grand St.
Elizabeth, NJ 07201
1-908-351-6550
Donald Davis Bags
1020 S. Church St. Ext.
P.O. Box 8369,
Spartanburg, S.C. 29305-8369
1-800-662-7756
www.donalddavisbags.com