Noah Cooper Harris

Definitely could have done a side hill patio on that side as well as the other but if you do too much to avoid the earth berming, at some point you just have a regular house

Finding the perfect hill can be difficult too when you have to take into account solar gain and staying on at least and approximate east/west axis.

Packing tires is horrible though to be honest, I've looked back many times and wondered if I could have gotten away with earthbags. Let me know if you find the answer to that question, or maybe I don't want to know haha. My feeling is that it would have to be a perfectly round structure to give earthbags enough strength which creates its own challenges in an Oehler concept.

Hey Cortney, I built an Oehler house with tire walls, kind of a PSP/Earthship hybrid with a post and beam structure supporting the roof and tire walls everywhere the house is sub-grade.

I think earthbags would be possible on a very small structure but would have a lot of trouble retaining all the lateral thrust from the side hills on anything big enough to live in. Even the massively heavy and "stepped back" into the hill tire wall shifted slightly early in the build. Added some i-beams anchored into the hill with turnbuckles and 4x14" wood shoring slotted in and haven't had a problem since but it gives you some idea of the immense force at work.

All in all it ended up being a terrific marriage of building techniques though, I think there's nothing wrong with picking and choosing your favorite techniques and experimenting. Good luck with your plans, whatever route you choose!

Thank you, good info!

I was thinking of using the expensive stainless steel chimney liner stuff. Basically this is being installed in an underground structure so I can't go through the roof and good exit points are difficult to find. My current plan involves snaking up and around a curved loft wall to get out. It's about a 20' run but isn't a very tight curve so I'm hoping I can clean it with flexible rods and appropriate plastic brush. I only have about a foot of space to work with in some areas (running under beams) and the pipe is 6" so there won't be a whole lot of cob encasing it at these points. That's why I was thinking I'd go with the thicker, expensive, stainless stuff. Still not sure it will work. The wall is non-combustible but it will be running under the ceiling beams every 6 feet which are wood . In my case, the cob idea was mostly about insulating the pipe from the ceiling with the mass as a happy side effect. I was going to use vermiculite or some other insulation in there as well.


I'm fairly new to stove stuff so please call me out if there are any obvious problems.

Anyone have more info on this? I'm interested in running stainless steel chimney liner in cob as an exhaust from a traditional woodstove. The run is up through a loft so has a lot of vertical lift, just wondering how this stuff would hold up when compared to regular wood stove pipe.

Reason being that I have a long 20' run up and around a long curved wall and normal fittings would be a huge hassle.

Thanks!