Burt Kemper

S Bengi wrote:You are most likely inside a city limit but if you do build outside any city limit you dont need to build to code.
I am not too sure they have a code for earthbag?

I would do a quick google search to see who else have build one near you and see who they used or if they can help.
I would also love to know if your are going to build a food forest and if so what plants you are going to get.

Someday hopefully I will get to where you are at and I will be able to build my home.

Hi S. Bengi
Thank you for contributing I am not in the city limits the property is zoned RCU10a which means it's rural residential and it can come under building codes. Today I recommend to anyone building with any alternative materials to check their local Safety and Building Department. It's not so much the materials but meeting certain codes for load bearing walls and septic use etc. The International Residential Building Codes in my area have no restrictions to materials used the IRC codes do require load bearing insulation values and other code requirements much like any house construction.
Hence the reason for looking for a contractor familiar with what I want to build with and can keep me from having issue.

The Safety and Building Inspectors do not spend time trying to find code violations here as much but even with a 40 acre piece of property one still has to worry about a neighbor calling something in because they don't like what your doing. It is a risk that not many discuss on forums that I have seen.
Another issue is that if you build with out codes you run the risk of an inspector telling you you have to tear it down or costly fines or both and having to go back into making it compliant.

I would love to have been able to buy in some other place perhaps with no building codes but I follow a wise practice of building environmentally, sustainable and preparedness which leads to building with in easy distance of where you are. Available materials on the land and water needs are all important reasons to make your decisions on.

I wish you luck in finding that piece for yourself as it already brought me piece of mind.

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

Anyone building with earthbags in Arizona. If so I need to know more about getting plans developed for a home. I also would like to know anyone in the Yavapai county area that has built with earthbags. Im trying to find a contractor designer that is familar with meeting building codes.