Ready Nutrition – by Joshua Krause
When most people think of sandbags, images of flood barriers and military fortifications typically come to mind. However, what most folks don’t know is that sandbags can be used to build more than just temporary structures. With a little more time, resources, and elbow grease, they can form long-lasting freestanding buildings.
When you think about it, the potential was always there. This is a building material that is frequently used by civilians to seal off flood waters. It’s also been used by the military to shelter their soldiers from small arms fire and rocket attacks, as well as reinforcing damaged buildings in war-torn areas. Sandbags are by all accounts, incredibly strong and structurally sound.
Until recently though, it was never considered an option for permanent buildings because traditional sandbags don’t last that long. The earthen materials tend to decompose with time and the bags themselves will eventually degrade. Fortunately, there are a few ways around these problems.
For starters, the invention of synthetic materials such as polypropylene has created bags that last significantly longer than their burlap predecessors. And by applying plaster or cement onto the finished product, they won’t be so quick to decompose. Builders can also line the bags with barbed wire, which works much in the same way as rebar does in concrete, allowing the bags to be stacked higher.
Using these techniques to create permanent housing has since been dubbed “earthbag construction.” This has seen increasing popularity in the developing world, and for very good reason. Since the materials can be sourced locally, it is one of the cheapest ways to build a house; and the skills required are simple enough that even people with little construction experience can build them. But more importantly, when built properly they can withstand just about anything including fires, floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes.
To give you an idea of what it takes to build an earthbag house and what they look like, take a gander at this quick video.
If this is something you’d be interested in building, you won’t have any trouble finding numerous videos like this online. It’s important to note though, that while these buildings require mostly unskilled labor to assemble, there are still some finer points to their construction.
For a more in-depth analysis on earthbag construction, I’d recommend that you take a look at earthbagstructures.com, which provides detailed instructions and links to integrity tests conducted on these buildings. I think you’ll be convinced that this is one of the safest and most affordable ways to build a comfortable, long-lasting home.
Joshua Krause was born and raised in the Bay Area. He is a writer and researcher focused on principles of self-sufficiency and liberty at Ready Nutrition. You can follow Joshua’s work at our Facebook page or on his personal Twitter.
Joshua’s website is Strange Danger
This information has been made available by Ready Nutrition
“Until recently though, it was never considered an option for permanent buildings because traditional sandbags don’t last that long.”
And the new ones won’t last very long, either. You’d be far better off without the bags, and just building your house out of compacted mud. (or “rammed earth”)
We have a method of building houses in this country that stems from a time when trees had to be cleared just to have enough space to build a house. The log cabin was eventually reduced to using as little wood as possible, and that gave us two-by-fours spaced sixteen inches apart, and two-by-twelve joists supporting the floor.
Wood is actually a very poor choice of building materials, but it’s traditional here because we had so much of it. Termites, rot, fire, and labor make it impractical unless you have too much of the stuff laying around and have to use it somewhere. If you’re building a new house, consider steel studs, rammed earth, cinder blocks, or adobe.
All of the above will be cheaper, impervious to fire, and will last longer.
Cool concept,
I think the only change i would make would be to pour a continuous cement lintel at the top of the walls, and actually integrate the chicken wire into that then plaster it sll together. Better for wind loads on the roof structure.
One cool benefit of this system is the balistic protection it offers or the mass effect for a rad barrier.
Great piece, more like this please
Thanks KF