Earthbag Building: The Tools, Tricks and Techniques Author: Kaki Hunter | Language: English | ISBN:
B005V5TDIO | Format: PDF
Earthbag Building: The Tools, Tricks and Techniques Description
Over 70 percent of Americans cannot afford to own a code-enforced, contractor-built home. This has led to widespread interest in using natural materials—straw, cob, and earth—for building homes and other buildings that are inexpensive, and that rely largely on labor rather than expensive and often environmentally-damaging outsourced materials.
Earthbag Building is the first comprehensive guide to all the tools, tricks, and techniques for building with bags filled with earth—or earthbags. Having been introduced to sandbag construction by the renowned Nader Khalili in 1993, the authors developed this "Flexible Form Rammed Earth Technique" over the last decade. A reliable method for constructing homes, outbuildings, garden walls and much more, this enduring, tree-free architecture can also be used to create arched and domed structures of great beauty—in any region, and at home, in developing countries, or in emergency relief work.
This profusely illustrated guide first discusses the many merits of earthbag construction, and then leads the reader through the key elements of an earthbag building:
Special design considerations
Foundations, walls and floors
Electrical, plumbing and shelving
Lintels, windows and door installations
Roofs, arches and domes
Exterior and interior plasters.
With dedicated sections on costs, making your own specialized tools, and building code considerations, as well as a complete resources guide, Earthbag Building is the long-awaited, definitive guide to this uniquely pleasing construction style.
Kaki Hunter and Donald Kiffmeyer have been involved in the construction industry for the last 20 years, specializing in affordable, low-tech, low-impact building methods that are as natural as possible. They developed the "Flexible Form Rammed Earth Technique" of building affordably with earthbags and have taught the subject and contributed their expertise to several books and journals on natural building.
- File Size: 19274 KB
- Print Length: 288 pages
- Publisher: New Society Publishers (June 1, 2004)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B005V5TDIO
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #184,465 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #7
in Books > Engineering & Transportation > Engineering > Civil & Environmental > Earthwork Design - #10
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Home Design > House Plans - #32
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Home Design > Buildings & Construction
- #7
in Books > Engineering & Transportation > Engineering > Civil & Environmental > Earthwork Design - #10
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Home Design > House Plans - #32
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Home Design > Buildings & Construction
I have been anxiously awaiting my review copy of "Earthbag Building: The Tools, Tricks and Techniques" by Kaki Hunter and Donald Kiffmeyer for quite some time, and am pleased to now have the chance to review it. Published by New Society Publishers, this book should find wide distribution and many fascinated readers. Having built my own home using earthbags, I have a fondness for this method of building and am a proponent of its use.
I applaud the authors and the publisher on the creation of a well organized, clearly written, lavishly illustrated and useful how-to book on the subject of earthbag building. They state the significant reasons for considering this technology, and then proceed to lead the reader through the basic steps of building this way. They write with well-grounded understanding of the physics and geometry of the subject as well as good humor. As they say in their Introduction, "The focus of this book is on sharing our repertoire of tools, tricks, and techniques that we have learned through trial and error, from friends, workshop participants, curious onlookers, ancient Indian nature spirits, and smartass apprentices who have all helped us turn a bag of dirt into a precision wall-building system that alerts the novice and the experienced builder alike to the creative potential within themselves and the very earth beneath their feet."
Doni and Kaki (as many of us know them) came to earthbag building via a workshop with Nader Khalili of The California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture, who is the father of modern earthbag works; he calls the technique Super Adobe.
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