Morgan Caraway

Hello all, Morgan of Sustainable Life School here! I am excited about our next workshop. We are going to be constructing the main frame of this tiny house pod on a trailer bed, then I will move it to where it will be set up at. I came up with this idea while sleeping on the plywood floor of a shed at a property I was working on. This would be a way you could have a great sleeping space and a nice covered area for cooking and living and also set up rainwater collection and solar power, all in one structure, at a fraction of the price of a standard tiny house! Come join us to find out how to build your own!

https://sustainablelifeschool.com/workshops

This isn't an earthbag workshop, but I wanted to list it here as I've listed all of my workshops here. I am excited about this build. We are going to be constructing the main frame of this on a trailer bed, then I will move it to where it will be set up at. I came up with this idea of the tiny house pod while sleeping on the plywood floor of a shed at a property I was working on. This would be a way you could have a great sleeping space and a nice covered area for cooking and living and also set up rainwater collection and solar power, all in one structure, at a fraction of the price of a standard tiny house! Come join us to find out how to build your own!

Tiny House Pod Workshop

Daniel Keeper wrote:I’m glad I found this thread. The 20 ft roundhouse part is pretty close to the scale I’m trying to understand.

I’m starting with a raw half-acre in northwest Missouri and have been looking at earthbag / hyperadobe / SuperAdobe ideas for a small Keeper’s Quarters. In my head it wants to be round and kind of skep-like, but practical first: roof, drainage, moisture, windows, and not building something dumb because I liked the shape.

For anyone who has built or lived with earthbag in a humid/freeze-thaw place, what would you want figured out before even drawing plans? Wall height, roof style, drainage, plaster, foundation, loft weight, something else?

I’m mostly trying to learn the order of operations before I spend money in the wrong order.

Hello Daniel! Sorry, I didn't get a notification you had posted in this thread!

Make sure you get a foundation (rubble trench, footer, slab, or bermed) below the frost depth there. Since we often build earthship style, we mostly berm (backfill) the earthbag wall portion of our houses. This saves a lot of extra excavation, gets you down into the ambient earth temperature (and away from extremes), and protects the wall base from freezing and heaving. With super storms, tornados, heatwaves, and other extreme weather phenomenon being an ever-increasing reality for most of us, it only makes sense to be as surrounded and protected by earth as possible. I build a single square shed metal roof over most of my round houses now. I have 2x10 or 2x12 beams on the front, back and center of the wall, then run 2x6 or 2x8 rafters to the ends.

There's really too much to cover in a short answer like this so I'll refer you to my website. https://sustainablelifeschool.com/

You can write me from a contact form there if you want to go deeper into all of these questions.

Good luck!

We've got another uber-cool workshop planned! During this workshop, we are going to work on plastering our host's hyperadobe tiny house AND we are going to experiment with T-Brick Adobe. As always, info at sustainablelifeschool.com!

Hope to see you there!

We will be leading this week-long earthbuilding masterclass in Vermont on July 26th to August 1st! We will be building an earthbag/hyperadobe tiny house from foundation to roof. We can only host 6 attendees so sign up to reserve your spot today!

Sustainable Life School Workshops

Hello all! I am wanting to make you all aware of our upcoming April workshop in beautiful Marshall, NC!

More info at sustainablelifeschool.com

John C Daley wrote:

 an article about building earthbag pools should be published in Mother Earth News

Do you have a link for this article?

Hey John! Sorry, I'm just now seeing your question. Yes! I will post all of the links to our Mother Earth News articles! Cheers!

Earthbag Pool Construction

Earthbag Tiny House

Earthship Inspired Earthbag House

We're leading another hyperfun hyperadobe workshop on Oct 17th - 19th in beautiful Marshall, NC during the peak of leaf season. Currently on deep discount!  Join us!

Click here for more info.

We're leading another fun hyperadobe tiny house workshop on July 12th and 13th (2025) near Marshall, NC. Come on down and check out this awesome building method!

https://sustainablelifeschool.com/workshops/

I'm excited to share that on April 4th - 6th, we are leading our first hyperadobe tiny house workshop near Marshall, NC. The workshop is on super deep discount currently. Come join us!
https://sustainablelifeschool.com/workshops/