Most polyethylene is impermeable, and therfore not ideal for common earthbag applications. For earthbag work you want these qualities: Strength--can withstand considerable pressure without stretching or breaking. Durability--will last for hopefully centuries without degradation, especially when protected by a covering of plaster, and is not adversely affected by moisture or normal temperatures. Permeability--some ability to breathe is particularly important when the fill material is dampened before being tamped into place; otherwise it will never dry out and become hard.
Low cost--not too expensive for common use. Availability--readily available in a form that can be used. I suggest that you check with the manufacturer of the material in question and see how it compares to polypropylene, which rates very high in each of the categories. A: You can use burlap bags to build with, but they will eventually biodegrade, so the polypropylene is generally better. Q: Looking at bags, I see gusseted and non-gusseted available.
I'm assuming the standard for construction with earth bags is the non-gusseted. Is this correct? A: I've used both the gusseted and the non-gusseted bags, and actually prefer the gusseted ones because the base of the bag doesn't produce pointed protrusions that need to be hammered back into the wall to make it smoother before applying a plaster.
Q: I would imagine that using Polypropylene would not be very 'green' because it is a 'plastic'; how can your building be properly 'breathable'? A: The poly bags are certainly a plastic, so in that regard they are not very "natural". Burlap bags are more natural. However, I feel that their use is justified by their superior strength and rot-resistance over time. They actually do breathe quite well because the material is woven from strands of fiber that allow air flow. A: I don't have any personal experience using bags other than polypropylene, but I know of others who have used jute or burlap bags.
These bags are actually more resistant to UV deterioration but less so to moisture than the poly bags. This shouldn't matter, however, if you are planning to stabilize the fill material. The natural bags can be more expensive as well.
Q: I read that some people use pillow cases as their earthbags. Would this be a good idea or cheaper? A: I would not advise using pillow cases for bags because they will not last as long and they will be more expensive in the long run. Q : What is the ideal width of an earthbag wall or the recommended dimensions of the bags for this application? A : The earthbags that I have used are designated as 50 pound rice bags, and are about 17 inches wide when flat and 32 inches long. This size works well, but is not critical; the bags could be somewhat larger or smaller, but I wouldn't go much smaller or the stability of the wall might be questionable.
Larger bags would be more stable, but take more material to fill them. Q: I am looking for dimensions of a filled sand bag. I know there are different size bags and you can put more or less material in them.
However there should be a basic dimension I could use when trying to design some with a standard 15 x 27" sand bag. When filled what would it be l x w x d. A: For a standard 18" X 30" bag after it is filled and tamped, the length is about 20" - 24", width is about 15" - 16" with plaster , height is about 5" - 6". Your smaller bags might be more like 18 - 21 inches long, 12 - 13 inches wide after plaster, and 4 - 5 inches high. These would be too small for many building projects. Q: Is there a rule of thumb in determining the right size, e.
Also, terra-form. Do you agree with their recommendations. A: Owen Standard earthbag bags and tubes are 18" wide. Final wall thickness after tamping is 15" before plastering. I recommend the 24" wide bags for walls that have to hold back a lot of pressure such as earth bermed walls. A: Kelly That is a pretty nifty calculator that they have devised.
I think that it errors on the conservative side, but that is generally good. Q: Could you please tell me which kind of polypropylene bags are more suitable for soil cement: a the ones that are kind of porous such as those for rice or corn or b the ones that are kind of impervious such as those for flour or sugar? A: I would vote for the more porous ones, because they will allow any damp material to dry our better.
Q : I live in Arizona; where is a good place to purchase polypropylene earthbags for building? A : I've been getting them as misprinted 50 rice bags, in bales of 1, from Inpack , at They can UPS them. It seems that the poly bags with that type of mixture are just to hold the form until it dries- is this assumption correct?
If I am right about this then wouldn't it be the same idea using unlined paper feed bags? However, I would have a couple of concerns about using paper bags for this purpose. Will they hold up well enough when damp? A 50 lbs tolerance may not be sufficient for the perhaps lbs of material they would be filled with.
Q : What will happen to the structure when the bags rot after some time? I am afraid that when the bags are worn out or rot then the remaining earth structure will no longer have strength to hold on together and will be vulnerable to damage due to rain, wind, excessive sun long period of drought. A : The answer to your question depends on what material the bags are made of, and what they are filled with.
If the bags are filled with a moist adobe soil, or stabilized soil, then it doesn't really matter if the bags rot, because the structure will remain solid.
If the bags are filled with a looser material, then you should use polypropylene bags rather that burlap or jute, because it will not rot over time.
You do need to be careful to keep the sunlight off the bags as much as possible and plaster them with something to protect them from the UV in the sun. Owen - one report said year-old polypropylene bags were recovered from a landfill which is approx. Q: I have purchased bags to begin a small home for my son and me. The bags are 14x21 and 16x I am now worried the smaller bags will be of little use. Is it possible to use these for earthbag building, possibly alternating rows?
A: The larger bags are better for insulation and stability. The use of small bags that form 12" walls are really too small for most projects other than low garden walls and such.
Nearly all of the significant earthbag projects that I am aware of use larger lb. I wouldn't advise staggering the rows, as it is better to have a solid base for all of the courses. You might consider using the smaller bags near the top of your walls, or for interior partitions or something, if necessary. A: In this case, it probably doesn't matter, as long as the earthen material is kept absolutely dry so that potential deformation of the wall is not an issue. Q: I am curious if you know if the long sandbag tubing that CalEarth uses is more structurally sound than the large rice bags.
Are there any benefits to one over the other? A: The long tube bags that CalEarth typically uses have both advantages and disadvantages. Their use does reduce the number of seams between individual bags, and for this reason might contribute to greater stability of a wall. To my mind, this is about the only advantage. I find them much more cumbersome to actually fill and place on a wall, and they practically demand that at least two people are involved in the process.
A major problem that I encountered was that they tend to roll as a unit when filled with loose material, like the crushed volcanic rock that I used in my bags. This is not so much of a problem when they are filled with adobe soil like CalEarth uses. Individual bags have a seam at the bottom, which gives each bag a distinct orientation that tends to keep it from rolling this way. C : We used polypropylene sandbags when I was in the Army. My experience from those days was that the poly bags installed in a wall and then bermed with earth so that there was no UV exposure would deteriorate fairly quickly if the soil in contact with them was consistently damp.
A : When I removed some of the earthbags that I had used to make a dam some 6 years prior I found the polypropylene material to be as strong and pliable as the day I put it in the ground.
Roots from the nearby tree had found their way into the bag, which was partially covered by a sheet of plastic, so any moisture that got in there did not easily evaporate. Of course this is a short time for such a test, but none-the-less you would expect some degree of deterioration from the moisture contact over that many years if it were to occur.
I did a bit of internet research, and came up with the following quotes:. The stress-induced degradation may result from comminution grinding, milling, or crushing , stretching, fatigue, tear abrasion, or wear. Nonetheless polypropylene has good chemical and hydrolytic resistance. I think it is quite likely that the bags you remember were already compromised by UV exposure, as it really only takes a few weeks of being in the sun for this to occur.
PP earthbags are currently being used as foundations for strawbale and other types of alternative structures, and often they are filled with gravel to avoid wicking action upward, so the fill is not consolidated into a firm material, like rammed earth and the integrity of the bag is crucial to the longevity of the building, as it is with my earthbag house, since the bags are filled with crushed scoria.
Just a few days ago I checked the exposed poly bags in our old pantry in Colorado, which are not exposed to sunlight, but are out in the interior air and occasional light. I gave one of the bags a good poke with my finger and it felt as strong and supple as the day I stacked in on the wall, which was over a decade ago.
Q: Mark is also a distributor of Cal-Earth bags, which I believe have some kind of patent. I am tempted to trust him that they are superior to regular bags, and without knowing exactly why, I will most likely use them in my earth dome building in Hawaii. But I'm not quite sure, I will use them in El Salvador for my sister's project. It might be too expensive to ship the rolls in a container. A: I actually don't think the Cal-Earth bags are any different than other bag material Polypropylene is polypropylene, even if some of it has been coated with UV retardant.
Nader did not patent this You can buy these rolls from the manufacturer for less than you can from Cal-Earth. I prefer to use the misprinted individual bags, which are cheaper yet. It's not that Cal Earth bags have a superior manufacturing process than everyone else. It's just that Cal Earth is not really selling bags, they are instead selling you the rolls from which you make your own bags.
I could see myself trying to hold together hundreds of small bags. It would not be easy, and if I am not that careful, I would have several bags sliding over on a daily basis. At Mark's earthbag dome in the Big Island, we had close to zero bags sliding over. Most of the time we were filling out long tubes, which is another name for a custom size big bag. Sometimes the whole row was one big tube, and as we went up the tubes got smaller. Part of my job was to use scissors to cut from the roll, and then using a needle and wire I closed one end of the bag, and then I was ready to start filling it with earth.
And the big help in making sure the tubes did not slide over was use of barbed wire. When the tubes are still wet, it is guaranteed that they are going to slide inwards if you don't use barbed wire. We found that out because of drying times which took close to a day, we could not do more than 4 rows per day.
We used small custom made bags on very few occasions, as fillers in difficult angles, and of course at the very top of the dome. So, I think that anyone else can get the same results if they buy rolls of material to make the bags yourself, instead of buying hundreds of small bags all the same size at pennies each.
Yeah, I don't see why anyone else besides Cal Earth cannot sell rolls of bag material. Inoue's domes one of these days. Need more info? It works exactly the same though, you just have two ends to seal. Its WAY cheaper I saw the bags on calearth. My thinking is that if I make earthbags for 30 days, I'll have earth bags.
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 earthbags together in about 5 hours in one day, not counting breaks, etc.
The exterior could be secured with ferrocement and remesh, cured well for the maximum 21 days 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. We can offer Tube Netting Rolls from our stock, or if you require a different size, fabric, colour etc.
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". If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I?
If not now, when? 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 in 8 hours so you could lay all 1, bags in 7 days. The earthbag house I'm planning to build will need earthbags min, closer to I have 3 kids - I'm 5'10, hubby 6'2 so we need it to be tall - kids will prob.
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! Forums: earth bag natural building. Cheapest earthbags you know of? Optional 'thank-you' note:. 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 Plus you don't need barbwire.
Hyperadobe is too costly for our limited budget unfortunately. If I can make one earthbag in five minutes, then in one hour, I'll have twelve earthbags. There is a lot of info about earthbags, hyperadobe, etc. Jonathan 'yukkuri' Kame.
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.
With no mortgage, low or no utility bills Only real obstacles are buying land and code enforcement Good luck! Doug Gillespie. Hyperadobe is too expensive? 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. 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.
Check you local animal feed store. My feed suppler just switched to a woven poly bag and they will make great earthbags. 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. 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. 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. Nobody plans on misprinting. How would you reinforce besides with barbed wire? 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. 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.
Thanks for the response, Doug. 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.
Scott Howard. Get a cinva ram - one time investment. These can be difficult to manage when using for building. Natural burlap bags new, additive-free, 9 oz. We occasionally carry larger untreated burlap bags 18"x30" and 23"x40" which, among other things, are just the thing for sack races.
Good for erosion control and that underground bunker that you've been thinking about. Specialty bags include: Heavy-duty polypropylene bags Available in any quantity, they're best suited for long-term deployment for flood or erosion control.
These are special-order and require advance payment, but come with free shipping. Monofilament gravel bags assorted sizes are typically used for filtration, storm water control and ballast. Nice to have behind your back seat if you get stuck in mud or in snow. Tools: We provide 4-point barbed wire in rolls or by the foot. This is used between the courses of bags to lock them together. We also provide tampers, bag fillers, sifters, zip ties, trowels - pretty much anything you need.
See our store here. Plastering: After building, you'll need to cover your structure. Popular materials include lime, cob, adobe mud, papercrete, stucco, and earthen plasters.
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