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