In the Earthbag Building book, it's suggested that one make a model of one's house before attempting to build it. While the idea intrigued me when I read it, I didn't seriously considering making a model of the Enviro Dome I'm going to build until this holiday season, when it occurred to me to make one out of gingerbread.
Since my house will consist of domes, I decided that I would construct my gingerbread model in the same way you make a clay coil pot, which would be similar to using earthbag tubing. I looked around online to see if anyone else has made a gingerbread house this way, and while I didn't find any, I did find a few gingerdomes that were constructed in other ways, such as this geodesic one: http://www.flickr.com/photos/35535885@N03/4153861565/. (The image is password protected, so I couldn't copy it in.) I also found a really cool site that features "green" gingerbread houses.
I wanted to make the model as close to scale as possible, and I used plastic yogurt container lids of two different sizes as my templates. They weren't precisely the right diameters, but close enough.
I started forming the first "course" of "tubes" around the templates,
but then realized I needed to place them on a base.
I used Jolly Ranchers topped by half a Life Saver for my door forms, and planned on removing them for the baking process, then putting them back in afterwards as the actual doors.
Justin was really good at making the "tubes,"
which I then moistened and stacked, trying to bring each "course" in just enough to get the corbelled dome effect. Once the domes were finished, I removed the candy doors and replaced them with a tin foil form.
Gingerdomes!
Into the oven went the house. When it came out, it looked like this:
Gingerblob!
I had suspected this might happen, but other than the fact that I couldn't do my cotton candy berm now, I really didn't mind. The purpose of this experiment was more about going through the process of creating the domes, rather than having some perfect finished product.
In retrospect, building the gingerdome this way was more like building with cob than with earthbags. And like cob, which needs to dry between building sessions, I should have baked a few "courses" at a time, just enough to give it some solidity before adding more.
Graeme and I were standing over the blob, gazing at it rather forlornly, when he said, "Wait!" He turned the baking sheet around, and said, "Look - it's a perfect troll face." And indeed it was.
Gingerface!
Well, it wasn't quite what I'd had in mind, but who was I not to go with the flow?
It's been almost two weeks now since I moved into my "Winter House."
Life has shifted dramatically, and I'm still trying to get used to things like having running water, working at home again, and cooking in a "real" kitchen. I'm definitely not complaining; it's just very different.
One of the first things I did after getting settled in was bake pumpkin bread in the oven, using organic spelt flour and a pumpkin I got from the Morning Star Farm CSA. Yum.
I also have been taking baths, staying up late (because I have electric lights!), and buying more food than I need immediately because I can store it in an actual refrigerator, with a FREEZER.
The house I'm renting belongs to a woman named Karen who lives in it half the year and in New York the other half. So I will be here until she comes back in May, which is great timing to move back out to the bus again.
One of the contrasts to living in the bus is having excellent insulation and passive solar gain. Karen had this house built out of pumicecrete, with lots of south-facing windows, and radiant floor heating. The result is that it's almost always warm in here, and the heat only comes on late at night, if at all. I actually lived in this house when I first moved to Taos, and even in the winter, you could sometimes leave the front door open during the day because it got so hot in the house. It's really amazing how well this place holds heat, which reinforces my decision to build my house with scoria, which is basically red pumice.
Now that I'm building my own house, I'm noticing things about this place that I didn't the first time I lived here. Like the layout - it's not an ideal use of the square footage, in my opinion. There are little areas that are not very useful. This makes me even gladder that I'm building domes, where every "square" inch of space will be used efficiently.
I also feel that the passive solar design is a bit overkill, that there are actually too many big south-facing windows. It's extremely bright in the living room and one of the bedrooms during the day. And, as I mentioned, it gets too hot, even in the dead of winter. Once again, this makes me appreciate Owen's design for the Enviro Dome I'm building, as it incorporates passive solar gain primarily through the French doors that provide the entrance to each of the main domes.
All in all it's nice to be back on the grid again for a while, but I do have to say that there's a certain level of unconsciousness that seems to go along with it. I can distract myself on the computer or watching movies whenever I want. I can read until all hours and barely be aware that it's nighttime. I can run any amount of water down the drain without having to think about how much it is or where it's going. I can turn on the oven without having to worry about how much propane is left.
Having on-grid conveniences means that my time and mental energy are freed up to focus on other things, but the trick is deliberately choosing what those things will be rather than just falling unconsciously into life-sucking time-wasters, like playing hours of computer Solitaire.
On August 18th, I finally started digging the trench that will become the foundation for my house. For those of you not familiar with rubble trench foundations, you can go here to read all about it. Basically what I'm doing is digging a trench around the circumference of the domes that is 18 inches wide by 18 inches deep. Then I'll fill it with about 6 inches of rubble consisting of rocks from around my property and then another 6 inches of scoria on top. (Scoria is also what I'll use to fill the bags later.) In the building plans it says that the first two courses of earthbags will then be double-bagged and will constitute the foundation of the house, with the top of the second course 6 inches above the pad, which will be finish floor level.
However, Owen Geiger emailed me the other day suggesting that I raise the building site by adding two extra courses of earthbags, then later laying scoria up to finish floor height, which would then be about a foot higher. (He also posted about this process here.)This will help keep snow and rain from entering the house, and the insulating properties of the scoria will mean a toastier floor.
So I think that's what I will do. However, that's a ways down the road. At this point, I'm hoping to simply finish digging and fill the trench before the ground freezes.
And speaking of freezing, the weather has shifted dramatically here in the past couple of weeks. It's like summer just up and ended, BOOM. It's been raining a lot, and it's gotten alarmingly cold. I haven't been able to shower at the bus let alone dig my trench. The plan now is that we'll be moving into town for the winter at the end of this month.
I'm actually looking forward to it. If it was just me with no kids, and the bus was enveloped, and I had an indoor bathing system set up, I think I could live in the bus for the winter, but none of those things are the case. Also, I've begun to miss certain things. When I first moved out there, I was afraid I'd really miss a bathtub; what I wasn't expecting is how much I miss having an oven. I love to bake almost as much as I love to bathe, especially in the fall and winter. Pumpkin pies, Christmas cookies, my eggnog cheesecake (which once snagged me a marriage proposal), all that good stuff.
I just hope the weather clears up enough for me to get some serious digging in before I move out. I can still go out there and dig after I move, of course, but it's just not as easy as getting up at the crack of dawn and walking out to the building site.
I have to say I've really been enjoying digging. There's something so primal about it, so satisfying. I love seeing the bold outline of the circles begin to take shape. It's actually hard to explain what's so fulfilling about it to me. I keep trying to think of metaphors and the only thing that continually pops into my head is using a cookie cutter. Making shapes out of a blob of dough. This is kind of like that except at a much, ahem, deeper level. I love the feeling of slicing down through the dirt with my shovel.
Also, there's something about going down into the earth that strengthens the sense of connection with it. As soon as I had a few feet done, I had the irresistible urge to get down in the hole. And it's a whole different perspective from there, quiet and solid.
In the earthbag house plans I bought from Owen Geiger, it says, "First, clear and level the building site." That one sentence, those seven little words, became my entire summer. And this, initially was for two main reasons: 1) I didn't have enough money to hire a guy with a backhoe, and 2) because of having to work, I could only work on the site an hour or two a day, and not even every day. Compounding these were the intense smoke from the Las Conchas fire through most of June and July, and the intense heat during the middle of the day.
I had this idea starting out that I could get the house finished before winter, and if I had hired a guy with a backhoe, maybe I would have. But after I realized that this simply wasn't going to happen, something very cool happened. I gave myself over to the work; I allowed myself to fall into its rhythm. I began to look forward to moving my daily inch of earth, just as I looked forward to other little daily tasks unique to my new living situation. It's all just part of this life, I now understood, each task as significant and ultimately meaningless as any action in life.
I came to look forward to rising at dawn and brewing coffee on my Coleman stove, writing in my journal, then going out with the mattock to chop grassy lumps, and eventually with a shovel, a rake, and a wheelbarrow to move dirt around to level the site. I didn't care how long it took anymore or how hard it was or how dirty and imprecise.
I realized I didn't actually want a guy with a backhoe to do it for me, even if I could afford it. One day it struck me that the process I was involved in was much like giving birth at home - it was MY work, my transformation. I was about halfway through the leveling process at that point; I was leveling the earth as it was leveling me.
My handheld tools powered by my lifeforce and gravity will have provided the foundation my house will rest upon until it is not more. And that could be a very long time, far longer than the life of the body responsible for it. Because it is not in fact the body that does this work, but the spirit does it through the body. The body is just another tool.
In the Earthbag Building book, Kaki and Donald say, "Action dispels doubt," and that has become sort of a mantra for me. Every time I've felt overwhelmed by the scope of the task, not having a clue what I'm doing, I've simply gone out there and started, and something in me has known what to do. It's as though the earth in my bones is listening to the earth beneath my feet; it's an intuition deeper than than an idea.
When I first realized how hard and time-consuming it was going to be to level the pad by hand, I started looking for shortcuts. I thought, Hmm, it's really only the rubble trench foundation that needs to be level, so I'll just start digging from the highest point and measure the 18 inches from there, and then level the trench with rubble later. And then the floor can be leveled with scoria much later.
I could have done that, but that intuitive earth in me wouldn't let me. On the practical level (no pun intended), I realized that I'd end up spending more on scoria down the line, but deeper and more primary than that was the need to become intimate with every inch of this project, this land. The need to do it completely, to inhabit it.
And the joy of seeing that little bubble in the center of the level window is so worth it. The joy of raking earth into spirals starting from the center of each dome circle and working my way out. The joy of standing on the ground of my one-day house and seeing it now flat and round, looking like Owen's construction drawings.
The merry month of May is also turning out to be a month of movement. In fact, I've felt at times like I'm on a speeding train I not only cannot get off, but have to drive. Unfortunately, most of this has not been related to my housebuilding project but to work. I'd like to get off this bullet train and get on the Peace Train instead, by there are many projects, many deadlines, and little time to think about - let alone do - anything else. I really shouldn't even be writing this post right now, but grading the papers, or working on the grant and two articles that all need to be done by Monday.
However, I have finally purchased and received my plans for the Enviro Dome from Owen Geiger and Kelly Hart. I cannot sing the praises of these guys enough. When I was preparing to order the plans, I had a substantial list of questions that I emailed to Owen, and he replied within a half hour with answers. I then placed my order, and received the plans in PDF files a few hours later.
I will finally be visiting my land next Friday to pick a building site and prepare to move the Sky Bus. It hit me the other day how little time is left before I have to move out of my rental house, so I've been fighting off a sense of panic. There is much to do, in many different areas, and it's difficult at times to prioritize, since it seems to all need doing at once.
But, I know it will all happen, and this time next month, I will be living in the Sky Bus on my land. That light at the end of the tunnel keeps me going.
I had no idea Dolly Parton covered this song so...interestingly.
When I first started researching alternative building methods several years ago, earthbags weren't even on the radar. I never once came across them in my many hours of wandering the Internet. With this recent round of research, I discovered them right away, literally within minutes of Googling "alternative building methods." Why? Because of two men, Owen Geiger and Kelly Hart, who have taken it upon themselves to disseminate information about this method freely and widely.
After reading on their Earthbag Building website and on Owen Geiger's Earthbag Building Blog, I was quickly sold. Earthbag building is a simple, dirt cheap way to build an elegant, incredibly strong structure with little or no building experience.
Geiger also has a blog featuring nothing but a cornucopia of earthbag plans he's designed, which further simplifies the process. For a very reasonable cost, you can order any of these plans from him. The plan I've picked out is the Enviro Dome:
I've chosen this plan because it's one of the simplest to construct while still providing enough space for my needs. I also like the fact that it can easily be added onto later. Using the dome structure means that you don't need a separate roof, which is another plus; you just earthbag it all the way up, using a simple compass to keep the angles accurate.
On another level, the dome structure appeals to me because it resembles a beehive (I don't call myself The Pollinatrix for nothing.) For years, I've been fascinated by the peregrini, wandering Irish monks of the early Celtic church who would set up beehive-like cells wherever they stopped and stayed for a while.
Monastic beehive cells, circa 6th century,
on the island of Skellig Michael, off the coast of Ireland
Soon I will get to live in my very own 21st century "Be Hive," as I've come to think of it.
Geiger estimates that you can build a house with earthbags for around $10/sq. ft., using recycled and scavenged materials. The polypropylene bags needed can be bought from a variety of suppliers at low cost, especially if you buy misprints. However, these bags can also be obtained for free with a little perseverance. I've starting looking for local suppliers, and recently found my first bag benefactor, a company in Santa Fe that goes through 20 - 30 bags a week, which would otherwise be discarded. I am in fact going there today to pick up my first free load of bags. I figure if I can find about five more suppliers such as this, I can likely build my house without ever having to purchase bags. It's just a matter of finding businesses like farms and ranches, breweries, etc, that regularly use materials like grain and feed that are packaged in these bags.
One of the wonderful things about Owen Geiger is that he is 100% invested in helping people build this way, as was quickly proven to me when I first began commenting on his blog. Every time I've asked him a question, he's responded within a day or two with a helpful and detailed answer. When I first commented that I had decided to use earthbags, and sent him the link to my blog, he immediately responded with enthusiasm and suggested that I use scoria for my bag fill, as its plentiful in my area (there's a volcano nearby). Kelly Hart built his earthbag house this way, and it's just brilliant. Scoria is highly insulative; I recently came across the blog of a couple who've built their earthbag dome house this way in Montana, and they say they've been warm all winter in it with just a crappy woodstove. Scoria is also much lighter than dirt, so the work goes "ten times faster," according to Geiger. It's also way less messy than using a dirt fill, which needs to be mixed with water.
Since choosing this method and starting this blog, I've discovered a variety of other bloggers who are either in the process of building with earthbags, are planning an earthbag house, or have already completed one. Just peruse my blogroll, and you'll see what I mean. I've even found a couple of people in my area who are or will be building with earthbags. All of this is just incredibly encouraging, to see that truly anyone, no matter how inexperienced at building, can do this, and do it very inexpensively. And to be part of what feels like a true movement at a time when that movement is really taking off is exciting, especially when there is a sense of community simultaneously building around it, no matter how "virtual."
