Cheapest earthbags you know of?

The cheapest I've been able to find earthbags at is about

$250 for 1000.

Hoping that someone knows of an organization that donates free earthbags or at least a price cheaper than $250/1000. 

The earthbag house I'm planning to build will need 2000 earthbags min, closer to 5000.  I have 3 kids - I'm 5'10, hubby 6'2 so we need it to be tall - kids will prob. grow to be taller than us.  Filling that many earthbags is hard, but easier than forming and baking that many adobe bricks with nearly the same bennies as adobe brick.

I found this place that sells used but clean sandbags but have yet to get the quote back from 'em.  After reading the awesome posts on here, I'm sold on earthbags completely.  The results are amazing!

Might want to look at hyperadobe. Pretty much earthbag with mesh bags. Has a lot of pluses going for it. I find ebags a pain to work with if they start unraveling...and they will unravel on you. Plus you don't need barbwire.

https://permies.com/bb/index.php?topic=6409.0

Hyperadobe is too costly for our limited budget unfortunately.
I saw the bags on calearth.org - nice bags but wow are they pricey.

My thinking is that if I make 100 earthbags for 30 days, I'll have 3000 earth bags.
in 90 days.

If I can make one earthbag in five minutes, then in one hour, I'll have twelve earthbags. So if I have another set of hands helping, we can have our 100 earthbags together in about 5 hours in one day, not counting breaks, etc.

Not everyone is comfy with a small house or a dome/round house. 

When you consider the benefit of not having a mortgage (low end $800/mth)
the five hours a day don't seem so bad for 30 days.

Someone posted that 1000 earthbags makes 700 sq feet of wall space, so
3 times that would be 2100 sq feet of wall space = 4 exterior 40 x 8 walls (1280 sq. feet of wall space) (about the length of a shipping container plus some walls for inside) = 1600 sq. foot house.

Reasonably speaking, this could be completed with about $5000?

The exterior could be secured with ferrocement and remesh, cured well for the maximum 21 days-28 days?  So the house could be completed in six months.

Is it possible for a poverty line family to have affordable housing that they can live quite comfortably in.  Can I do that?  Numbers seem to show that it is possible.

There is a lot of info about earthbags, hyperadobe, etc., on this site:  http://earthbagbuilding.wordpress.com/


Be sure you read the comments too, they can have additional info.

eye4earthbags wrote:Is it possible for a poverty line family to have affordable housing that they can live quite comfortably in.  Can I do that?  Numbers seem to show that it is possible.

While eco-ethics and other lofty ideals are all fine and dandy, but the owner-builder route to financial freedom is at the core of building with earth.  The numbers have been gone over by a number of authors, Rob Roy (earth sheltered and cordwood houses) being the first I read about.  Lots of ordinary folks have proven it is achievable. 

Bottom line, you could spend 1/3 of your working life paying a mortgage, or 1 summer, or maybe even a month, building a modest home that will require virtually no energy for heating and cooling and still be around for your great-great-grandchildren.  Hmmm....

With no mortgage, low or no utility bills... you have knocked out a huge percentage of your expenses.

Only real obstacles are buying land and code enforcement...  Good luck! 

Hyperadobe is too expensive?  The material is, as far as I can see, admittedly somewhat more expensive than woven bags, but on the other hand you don't need the barbed wire, which is a slight savings.  The biggest savings, though, will be in the time required.  Based on what I've seen, you could potentially be building a LOT faster with hyperadobe mesh tube material than with individual sacks.  Time is also money, even when you have more of it on hand than money.

Also, if you're not high on the idea of a dome, I would consider a vertical walled structure with a reciprocal frame roof.  That's what we're hoping to get built this year, as we're not big on domes ourselves (although we may do one for a smokehouse later on).

Finally, I would take anyone's estimates of how many bags = how many square feet of interior space with a huge chunk of salt.  There are just too many variables.  Sit down with your design and do the math on how many linear feet of wall and how many courses you're going to need and be sure.

Doug

edit - it occurred to me that you might be thinking of superadobe, and CalEarth's bags, instead of the mesh stuff as seen here - http://www.earthbagbuilding.com/articles/hyperadobe.htm

Check you local animal feed store. My feed suppler just switched to a woven poly bag and they will make great earthbags.


J

elsyr wrote:
Hyperadobe is too expensive?  The material is, as far as I can see, admittedly somewhat more expensive than woven bags, but on the other hand you don't need the barbed wire, which is a slight savings. 

That would depend on where you live,  The omission of barbed wire in a seismicly active or potentially active zone could prove to be a fatal mistake.  A dome still requires the use of barbed wire regardless of where you live, or what kind of bags you use.

The following company offers misprint bags at $150/1000 (15 cents each)
http://www.pac-packaging.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/Earthbag_Specifications.51104305.pdf

PaulB wrote:
That would depend on where you live,  The omission of barbed wire in a seismicly active or potentially active zone could prove to be a fatal mistake.  A dome still requires the use of barbed wire regardless of where you live, or what kind of bags you use.

The following company offers misprint bags at $150/1000 (15 cents each)
http://www.pac-packaging.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/Earthbag_Specifications.51104305.pdf

As I mentioned later in my post - I'm not building domes at the moment.  Actually, I don't really see all that much appeal in them except perhaps in limited specific applications (such as the potential smokehouse I may do later).  For domes though, you are correct that (regardless of the bag material or the location) barbed wire is recommended by the experts.  For a vertical walled structure, the consensus seems to be that barbed wire is unnecessary, as the wall is considerably more monolithic in nature.  In an area with significant seismic activity, I would be reinforcing with more than barbed wire anyway.  Even in a vertical walled structure, if you want to use barbed wire between the wall courses, it is dead cheap - a quarter mile roll of 12.5ga 4 point is well under $100.  We fully intend to use it in some places, such as wal intersections and around openings (which will be arched).

As I said, though, I think the most important savings with mesh bag hyperadobe as opposed to individual bags is in time, rather than money.

One possible issue with the misprint bags is availability - if they're available in the size you want/need , it will be better to buy as many as you will need in one purchase, as you never know when they will be available at that price again.  Nobody plans on misprinting.   

Doug

elsyr wrote:In an area with significant seismic activity, I would be reinforcing with more than barbed wire anyway.  Even in a vertical walled structure, if you want to use barbed wire between the wall courses, it is dead cheap - a quarter mile roll of 12.5ga 4 point is well under $100.  We fully intend to use it in some places, such as wal intersections and around openings (which will be arched).

How would you reinforce besides with barbed wire? 

Chicken wire? Buttresses? Recycled fish nets?  Rebar? 

We are looking at building with earth in Japan, the mother of all seismic zones, so it is a big concern. 

yukkuri_kame wrote:
How would you reinforce besides with barbed wire? 

Chicken wire? Buttresses? Recycled fish nets?  Rebar? 

We are looking at building with earth in Japan, the mother of all seismic zones, so it is a big concern. 

I'd probably be using rebar and designing in plenty of buttresses.  I'd also probably stay away from corbeled domes, but that's just me - I have an instinctive (admittedly irrational) distrust of corbeled domes.  If you're considering building in Japan, I'd definitely head over to earthbagbuilding.com and the associated blog on wordpress.  There's a great deal of information there, including discussion of reinforcement and engineering and also a good bit on work that's been done with earthbags and domes in Japan (IIRC, by a professor Inoue).

Doug

Thanks for the response, Doug.  I am familiar with that blog.  I had read a little about Prof. Inoue.  The organization he works with is considered a cult by many in Japan.  I do take that label with a grain of salt, because the Japanese tend to label anything outside the mainstream as a cult...and not entirely without reason as there are lots of cults in Japan.  Regardless, I hope to see Prof. Inoue's domes one of these days. 

yukkuri_kame wrote:
Thanks for the response, Doug.  I am familiar with that blog.  I had read a little about Prof. Inoue.  The organization he works with is considered a cult by many in Japan.  I do take that label with a grain of salt, because the Japanese tend to label anything outside the mainstream as a cult...and not entirely without reason as there are lots of cults in Japan.  Regardless, I hope to see Prof. Inoue's domes one of these days. 

Strange the way that happens.  The place in India from which I'm probably going to buy a manual compressed earth block press is also (according to folks in India I've talked to) widely regarded as a cult, albeit generally a benevolent one.

Doug

Get a cinva ram - one time investment.  I like that idea.

I teach a lot of earthbag building.  Now it's going toward hyperadobe because it is far less expensive. no barbwire, and the bags are way way less.

I have a line on some mesh material at only 180 dollars for 2,000 bags.

I'll be teaching the hyperadobe method this summer and probably exclusively thereafter.

http://www.bagsonthenet.com/store/product.php?productid=520&cat=19&page=1

this is a big tube instead of lots of bags. It works exactly the same though, you just have two ends to seal.

Its WAY cheaper....

SILVERSEEDS wrote:
http://www.bagsonthenet.com/store/product.php?productid=520&cat=19&page=1

this is a big tube instead of lots of bags. It works exactly the same though, you just have two ends to seal.

Its WAY cheaper....

That's solid polyethylene tubing, not woven polypropylene.  I doubt the earth mix inside would cure with any speed as the moisture would be trapped inside, and I also wonder how well it would stand up to tamping and/or barbed wire in between the courses, especially as it's only 1.5mil, which is REALLY thin stuff.

Doug

elsyr wrote:
That's solid polyethylene tubing, not woven polypropylene.  I doubt the earth mix inside would cure with any speed as the moisture would be trapped inside, and I also wonder how well it would stand up to tamping and/or barbed wire in between the courses, especially as it's only 1.5mil, which is REALLY thin stuff.

Doug

well scroll through they have different thicknesses.... If your doing the earthbag style that needs the right consistency  to set, the bags are meaningless really. cob is the same thing, or adobe....

the whole cool factor from earth bags comes from the fact you can build solid buildings from nearly any material. some use it much more like adobe or cob though, so I am confused to the benefit over cob at that point.

http://www.amazon.com/Building-Earth-Flexible-Form-Earthbag-Construction/dp/1890132810

this book is about using it with most any materials. pebbles, sandy soil, clay soil etc. whatever is on site literally. the types that need it to set Im sure are stronger, but the other stuff is good as well. I have a friend who built one like 15 years ago, just like that and its still great.

Even in a thicker polyethylene, you'd still have the problem of it not breathing, and the contents not curing properly.  That's why woven polypropylene of the feed sack type was the initial bag of choice, and raschel mesh of the produce bag sort is possibly going to become the new (hyperadobe) standard.  Yes, a big part of the advantage of earthbag over free form adobe or cob is that it is less sensitive to the precise soil mixture, but that is largely due to the structural integrity added by the bags during construction and curing.  In order for that to work, though, the bags have to do their part, and I do not think that solid polyethylene will do that.  As a moisture barrier, PE is great, but generally the last thing you want in an earthbag is a moisture barrier. 

The book you link to, by the way, is out of print and the prices on it fluctuate a bit.  It's nice to see it on Amazon so inexpensively at the moment.  "Earthbag Building" by Kiffmeyer and Hunter is more easily available, and I highly recommend it.  Patti Stouter's PDFs on earthbag design and construction are also excellent, and you can't beat the (free) price.

Doug

  Well i dunno. A friend of mine built one with these same bags. Using the same book. its why I had the links handy actually.

  Many dont even use soil in these. As I was saying according to my friend there are two schools of thought, ones who use these similar to adobe, and others who use ANY on site soil or pebbles with very little that cannot be used. Theres nothing to cure, so Im not sure your point.

  could you explain the moisture barrier thing? all materials are used dry as my friend did it. then plaster on the outsides and insides.... there are moisture barriers in many types of walls. 

    im going by what a friend told me on this, and hes built one. Its still standing. perhaps he linked me the wrong stuff I dunno, but he said thats what he used....

I guess he might of did a quick search and sent the wrong link....

heres a place with polypropylene tubing... I guess he must of got confused......

http://daybag.com/industrial/polypropylene/woven-specialty-bags/circular-woven

  not sure this is the cheapest place, i was just seeing if there were rolls of the other type.....


  still though, there was nothing that was wet with what my friend did, and nothing to "set".

Typically, the soil used in the earthbags is slightly moist before tamping, and it's allowed to cure after tamping.  Using totally dry material, I think you might miss part of the process of "flexible form rammed earth" - the compression and curing - that makes it so effective.  Without that step, you would be depending on the structural qualities of the bag not only during construction and curing, but permanently.  In essence, you'd be building a sandbag wall, not a rammed earth structure.  In that case, I definitely would NOT want PE bags, as woven PP is generally a LOT stronger.

As for the moisture barrier thing, one of the points very frequently emphasized in the earthbag (or cob, for that matter) building literature is that an advantage of earthen construction is its ability to breathe.  This is one of the big contrasts of earth building with most typical modern construction, which (due to the presence of Tyvek wrap or other moisture barriers) cannot breathe.  PE does not breath.  Woven PP does.  As do earthen or lime plasters, as opposed to cement based stucco.  I suppose if your sack filling material is totally dry, it might not make much of a difference, but this seems to me to be another area where using PE bags would eliminate the benefits of building with earth to begin with.  Also, unless you're building in the middle of a desert, it will be awfully difficult to achieve total dessicaton of your building material. 

That said, there's probably not a single combination of bag and earth materials that somebody somewhere somewhen could not make work somehow.  

Edit - just saw your additional post - the first link is to cellophane bags which would probably not stand up to a stout sneeze.  The second, however, looks like the type of woven PP that is usually mentioned in the earthbag context.  Personally, I'm very excited about the possibilities of hyperadobe using mesh tubing. 

Doug

opps i meant to erase that top link....

so doug..... Ive got a heavy clay soil. its powdery like silt. by heavy I dont mean only tilth, a bucket of it dry weighs more then water.

My friend who did this, said my soil would be fine as is..... In your understanding, with having it set and all.... would my soil be okay???

Sounds like your soil may be somewhat similar to our north Georgia clay!  Ours is not quite so powdery, but it sure as hell is heavy enough.  As a guess, I'd say it will probably be fine.  My main concern would be that those fine particles are, in fact, clay and not silt.  From what I've read, it can sometimes be hard to tell the two apart, but they can behave very differently when you try and build with them.

For ourselves, we plan on doing some of the soil tests found in the documents at the link below on ours, and making some test bags, this weekend (or possibly next).

http://www.simpleearthstructures.com/earthbag-info.php

Specifically, look for "Soils for Earthbag" parts 1 and 2 - great stuff.  There are also a lot of other useful docs on that page.

Doug

well theres a lot of silt in there to, but tons of clay.... the sand layer is so fine its powder to.... thanks for the link.

I was reading the soil section, it does sound like you need the exact soil you do for cob housing or adobe.

So Im kinda confused as to the benefit over those....

Interesting forum, I want to do something slightly different, I am making a square pallet shed with supporting walls. I am then thinking to add sand bags all round but not touching the pallet shed. ( I have a few designs for this). My question is, This shed is not a permanent shed so was thinking of just putting sand / soil in poly tubing bags, this is my way of sound proofing a shed on the cheap, but will the sand bags hold up if they are not setting rock solid?

p.s. if this does work I can build a sound proof shed for less than £50.00

Thanks

J

i went around town to horse stables, i get quite a few free that way. real pay dirt (pun) was finding a chicken farmer at the local farmers market who was willing to save 60-70 bags a week for me. my 20'x25' cabin is coming along nicely and i now have bags coming out my ears. they are stuffed just about anywhere i can keep them out of the sun. the only downside has been dust from the old feed and some of the horse bags are ripped from opening with knife.

Dear Earth Bag Builder,

I know a good bit about the type of project your wanting to build and I would suggest you allow the form to be more stable and permanent one and one that comes freely or perhaps you can be paid to remove it.

I'm speaking of used automobile tires of course, in place of bags as that they are in abundance , light weight to handle , can be packed easily 1 at a time by anyone able to build a bag building when a single face is removed and the small locally owned tire shops in most areas of N. America are having to pay $2+ to dispose of them . Let them pay you !

An average home of 1000 sq, ft. might need somewhere between 800 to 1000 tires and they are most likely , right in your back yard and available to you without cost.

I hope that helps you with your cost issues & Happy Building !

eye4earthbags McCoy wrote:

Hyperadobe is too costly for our limited budget unfortunately.
I saw the bags on calearth.org - nice bags but wow are they pricey.

My thinking is that if I make 100 earthbags for 30 days, I'll have 3000 earth bags.
in 90 days.

If I can make one earth bag in five minutes, then in one hour, I'll have twelve earthbags. So if I have another set of hands helping, we can have our 100 earthbags together in about 5 hours in one day, not counting breaks, etc.

Not everyone is comfy with a small house or a dome/round house. 

When you consider the benefit of not having a mortgage (low end $800/mth)
the five hours a day don't seem so bad for 30 days.

Someone posted that 1000 earthbags makes 700 sq feet of wall space, so
3 times that would be 2100 sq feet of wall space = 4 exterior 40 x 8 walls (1280 sq. feet of wall space) (about the length of a shipping container plus some walls for inside) = 1600 sq. foot house.

Reasonably speaking, this could be completed with about $5000?

The exterior could be secured with ferrocement and remesh, cured well for the maximum 21 days-28 days?  So the house could be completed in six months.

Is it possible for a poverty line family to have affordable housing that they can live quite comfortably in.  Can I do that?  Numbers seem to show that it is possible.

Here is some info for calculations found in Earthbag Building By Kaki Hunter and Donald Kiffmeyer
I suggest you purchase this book as it contains great info on the subject of earthbag construction even if it is a bit dated 2004.

In the book Appendix B

The example uses 50lb bags 17" by 30"

How many bags needed to build a wall 9' high 100' long

Convert bag height and length into feet divide height of wall by .42ft (thickness of bag) and length of wall by 1.67ft (length of bag)

So for height 9ft you would need 22 rows of bags. 9ft divided by .42

Length 100ft divided by 1.67ft = 60 bags.

Now multiply 22x60 = 1,320 bags for total wall

You can find all calculations for the rest of the process from How many 50lb bags per ton, cost of bags, the barbed wire then calculate cost of materials per square foot, total number of bags by number of finished bags per hour and finally cost of labor.
You will also find number of hours to build the wall as an example the given in the book which uses 6 people in three teams you can lay 24 bags an hour or 192 in 8 hours so you could lay all 1,320 bags in 7 days.

Really one would want to know all of these to have a realistic cost of building an earthbag house. Of course this does not include electrical or plumping costs.

Hope this helps to contribute to this forum.

My goal is to build a earthbag house in the very near future and share the experience here.
Thanks

How are the projects coming along? We've been saving winery bags, hope to build the shed this year so we can start the house next year. Looking forward to seeing the updates to all the projects here. (or links to them)

Hey everyone,
I know this is a couple years late, but we here at BAG Supplies Canada also have these bags in stock. Our tube netting is approximately 16inches and reaches 20inches when filled and comes in rolls of 3000 feet. Our prices are extremely competitive and worth looking into. If you have any questions, would like some pictures or quotes then please contact us at info@bagsupplies.ca.
Thanks and I hope this can be of some help!
-Kas

Ok, been to the site and saw earthbags and:

We can offer Tube Netting Rolls from our stock, or if you require a different size, fabric, colour etc. than we hold in stock then we can have
it made to order to your specific eco friendly bag supply requirements.

Our Tube Netting Rolls are ideal for a building product, packing of vegetables, or anything that is on a continuous flow and needs to be contained".

Before I jump on the phone, make a long distance call to another country or spend lots of time on your site trying to figure out what those "netting rolls" are made of and how much they/it costs how about you just tell me!?

Looks like some sort of reinforced burlap. Maybe we could start with the price of the 3000 foot roll not including shipping.

I myself am looking at poly bags as I'll be on my own so filling the tube is not likely to work too well unless I can clone myself for the extra help. Probably just stand around and argue with myself though.

I don't like the burlap in my case because as much as I dislike plastic, it lasts a long time when buried and my soil isn't quite ideal to stand on it's own. I'm also doing a timber frame due to this same reason.

Not everyone is in the SW USA with good building soil and minimal rainfall so that must be taken into consideration.

So come clean and tell us what you got, what you know and what you can do.

Sorry, I'm in one of those moods today and have never been fond of talking to "sales". My idea of pricing is per 1000 bag bale and that the "roll stuff" is a little bit more in price. There's a real good book on the subject and it's pretty much open source. Just type earthbag kaki donald into the search engine. It's good stuff.

Hi John,
I completely understand that you don't want to waste too much time looking into this. Our tube netting is made out of raschel knitting, or polypropylene, which is the same material as the bags, just a different thickness. Our current price of the tube netting for a 3000 foot roll is $337 Canadian.
As for prices for individual bags, it depends on what size bag you are looking for, for example, for 1,000 bags, we have 24x39 misprinted bags that we sell for $150 Canadian. We also have 16x30 for $225, 14x26 for $225, 15x20 for $172, 18x30 for $230, 19x36 for $280, and many more.
You can always e-mail us if you want to know more, but I will keep an eye out on this as well if you would like to reply through here. Keep in mind that these prices are in Canadian and our current prices, they may change in the near future. Shipping and taxes are extra depending on location as well.
Thanks for the reply John and I hope this helps you out.

The 20x39 misprints sound like a good deal though I imagine shipping would kill it for me. I'll contact you. Thanks for the reply.

Burt Kemper wrote:

eye4earthbags McCoy wrote:

You can find all calculations for the rest of the process from How many 50lb bags per ton, cost of bags, the barbed wire then calculate cost of materials per square foot, total number of bags by number of finished bags per hour and finally cost of labor.
You will also find number of hours to build the wall as an example the given in the book which uses 6 people in three teams you can lay 24 bags an hour or 192 in 8 hours so you could lay all 1,320 bags in 7 days.

24 bags an hour seems like a unrealistic goal. Mixing earth, sand, lime, water, then moving it from the mixer to the bag, then putting the bag in place, measuring to make sure you are lined up correctly, then tamping it down, seems like it would take longer than one every couple minutes. Minimum 2 people on the mixer (one adding materials, one running the machine), 2 people running dirt from mixer to site, 2 people on the install (filling bags, placing bags, and tamping). All these people must rotate as to extend their work efficiency. Tamping takes a lot out of you.

My best guess... 6-10 bags an hour tops with only 6 people. You get more and more tired as you go along. You must plan rest breaks. Oh and wear gloves. Blisters make this a lot harder. Lime will eat your skin.
This comes from my experience with this project https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR55TJPv5S4

eye4earthbags McCoy wrote:The cheapest I've been able to find earthbags at is about

$250 for 1000.

Hoping that someone knows of an organization that donates free earthbags or at least a price cheaper than $250/1000. 

The earthbag house I'm planning to build will need 2000 earthbags min, closer to 5000.  I have 3 kids - I'm 5'10, hubby 6'2 so we need it to be tall - kids will prob. grow to be taller than us.  Filling that many earthbags is hard, but easier than forming and baking that many adobe bricks with nearly the same bennies as adobe brick.

I found this place that sells used but clean sandbags but have yet to get the quote back from 'em.  After reading the awesome posts on here, I'm sold on earthbags completely.  The results are amazing!

here is a source that is about as cheap as can be!

http://www.saraglove.com/White-Poly-Sandbags-p/psb-sandbags-p.htm?gclid=CMaIlcbDsb8CFVFp7AodSBoAzQ

All the best,
Clayton

The cheapest sandbags that I was able to find were from all in safety.com 18x30 poly bags for 210 1000 bags. Hope this helps someone http://www.allinsafety.com/wovenpolypropylenesandbags18wx30l1000pc.aspx

I know this is an old thread and that since the last post thinking on materials might have changed, but just in case...

If a person's not in a rush and is looking for free sources for bags, I'd suggest putting out the word with horse owners asking for their feed bags.  If a person volunteered to pick up feed bags once a month after a while you'd have quite a lot of bags and a lot of happy horse owners.

I'm not sure what the material the bags are made of is called, but it's a kind of woven plastic-like material.  It will break down into strings of material if left in the sun a long time, but then earth bags all do that, far as I can tell. I've offered my bags for free to anyone who wants them locally but nobody around here seems to be into earth bag construction.