Jeanne Darling

Where we're at in New Mexico, rainfall is very scarce. There is a wet season, but overall the place only gets about 1ft of rainfall a year. During the coldest parts of the year, ground freezes down to a depth of 2ft.
There is plenty of sand, clay, and rock where we're building, so I guess that earthbag mix is the way to go. Months ago, I was surfing the web and found some great instructions that even mentioned the dimensions of the filled earthbags, but I can't find where that was. I suspect they were on the permies forum somewhere, but I'm not sure. If that rings a bell to you, let me know.

Thank you for the speedy reply. The plans actually came from this forum. I don't have the link, but I attached the pdf. The plans are a little sparce on detail, but I think you just filled in some of it.

When I said skoria + cement mixture, I meant portland cement plus skoria mixed together, but from what you told me, I need to add some sifted sand to that? We're in Taos, New Mexico where I hope the dirt will be okay for that. Its very sandy on top with heavier clay particles a little ways down.

The concrete is just going to be for the slab on top. I mentioned "wet concrete" because I thought all concrete starts out wet and then dries. I don't know anything about concrete or cement at all. I've never worked with it. A fellow who does work with concrete is going to meet me out at the build site and rent out his mixer to me. I'm relying pretty heaviily on his expertise because I'm totally out of my depth on how to build a circular formwork. Even the plans provided don't go in to great detail on that. I think they just kind of assume it is easy enough to figure out, but It is actually really stressing me out.

Can one build a simple platform with earth bags filling them with skoria while not using portland cement?

I know that I must dig a rubble trench, tossing the dirt just outside the trench so that I can berm the sides of the platform.
I know I must fill said trench with skoria.
I know that I must fill the first couple rounds of earth bags with skoria <- It is at this step that I don't know if the earth bags require a skoria + cement mixture or just skoria.
I know that I must fill in the space contained within the earth bags with skoria acting as insulation.
I know that I must lay out plastic sheeting atop the skoria to prevent the wet concrete from leaking downward, then pour cement inside of my formwork.

Are these pretty much the steps I need to take? I'm unsure of whether or not portland cement is needed for any kind of earth bag fill or just if you're using actual sifted dirt and rock.
The platform is only going to be about 12" high plus the height of a concrete slab poured atop it. It is upon that concrete slab that I will build my yurt.

Hello everyone! I'm Jeanne, and my wife and I are moving to just outside of Taos, New Mexico. We're currently trapped in middle Tennessee, but our goal is to get out there at least by the summer. We had good luck with money and several initial purchases, but our luck and money have run out. I'll try to make this brief.
We lack money
We lack crafting skills
We do have one acre of semi-arid mesa with no trees to spare...all sand, sage, and rock of various sizes with a few junipers that are there to stay
We do have building materials for the yurt from Coloradoyurt

However, we lack a platform for said yurt

There is a complex reason for why we bought what we did and when we did, but it's not important to this thread.
We absolutely cannot afford a SIPS deck or anything prefabbed. We definitely cannot afford to pay a craftsman to build a wood platform no matter how cheap the wood is. We are not craftsman ourselves. We cannot afford to pay a cement company to do all the work. So we'll have to prepare the site at the very least.
My wife found the plans for the earthbag yurt platform on this site, and it seems like a godsend. We actually can afford the bags, barbed wire, and fill materials, and up to the cement pouring, we can do the labor, however tedious and taxing it is. Apparently, there is a company that sells lavarock just over an hour north of us in Antonito, CO that seems to sell 3//4" - 1 1/2" scoria. According to the plans, scoria should work as a fine insulator under our floor.
I'm genuinely scared of the cement pouring part of this plan. We have no experience, and this yurt is 24ft in diameter. That's a huge circle to create a concrete form for. I've read and seen pictures of plywood forms, but bending plywood into a (good enough) perfect circle and bracing it well enough for the pour sounds incredibly hard to me.

1) Does anybody have any videos or step-by-step pictures (or really detailed and descriptive) of how to make a 24' plywood concrete form?
2) Does anybody have a cheap alternative to a really big plywood concrete form that doesn't take skilled labor?
3) Does anybody have an alternative to a concrete floor that we could actually afford or build? I see pictures of earthen floors, but I don't understand what I'm looking at really. We want to be able to walk barefoot in our home any day of the year and not worry about moisture wicking up into our home.

This dwelling is not permanent, but we will be spending five, maybe six months out of the year trying to live in this yurt. Our only major hurtle at this stage is the top of our yurt platform aka, the floor. We need all the help we can get. Thank you for reading!