Man Builds 2 Earth Dome Cabins for Less than $10,000 (Pictures)
Are you interested in exploring alternative means of sustainable living, but don’t think it can be done? Though not as common as it should be, many individuals choose to live off-the-grid and rely on themselves by collecting rainwater, planting gardens, using alternative energy, and more. People are even building their own little ‘Earth dome’ houses. Want to see what I’m talking about? Check out these pictures and video below.
Evolving from historic military bunker construction techniques, Earthbag building is a relatively inexpensive method of construction that uses limited resources at a low cost. The technique uses natural materials (usually local), such as sturdy stacks filled with inorganic material. Subsoil that contains enough clay to become cohesive when tamped, gravel, sand, or volcanic rock are common materials used for Earthbag building.
Construction starts with a trench to the subsoil and is followed by a filling with cobble stones or gravel. Bags or tubes filled with gravel can then be placed inside the trench to provide a water-resistant foundation. Popular bags include Polypropylene (the ones used to transport for rice and other grains) due to low cost and resistance to water damage, rot, and insects.
With the artistic glamour that these Earth domes provide, who wouldn’t want one of their own?
While we continue to recover from the sub prime mortgage lending crisis created by the greed of central banks, people everywhere are looking for industrious ways to live without a mortgage at all, or at least afford housing in a more sustainable vein. This becomes even more true, on another level, when you learn that the government tries hard to disallow free, sustainable living.
One Florida woman has gone head to head with a local judge who has declared her efforts to live off the grid illegal and in violation of local and international code ordinances. Similarly, a Florida couple has had to challenge the state when they were told they would be fined $500 simply for having a vegetable garden on property they owned for over 20 years.
It might be time to rely a bit less on others, and more on ourselves.
There are dozens of ways to build inexpensively until the Govt. gets involved. Just remember it’s for your safety ! LOL like they care one bit. It’s only for the fees that they can charge and so they can tell you what works and doesn’t because my book says so! No matter what they say about green they (govt.) don’t want you off the money train (theirs that is ie: utilities, etc.).
Absolutely Kim and this is one of my biggest complaints about ‘government’. The codes make it impossible to do what you want on your own land, and that is unconstitutional. It’s not like the codes protect people during hurricanes, tornadoes, etc. They’re there to raise money; all codes involve fees that need to be paid, and if you break the law, there’s huge fines to be paid. It’s a scam with the back up always being ‘well the neighbors complained’ or ‘it affects property values’. The way I look at it, ‘property values’ should be about LOWERING property and housing costs, not trying to keep them artificially raised.
Signalfire I also agree with you on the code issue. This is why as a contractor I stopped pulling permits. I noticed that the codes would be changed as soon as they were
Written and completely open to interpretation by each inspector. I also warned my customers that each time a permit was pulled your lease (taxes ) would go up for improving their property.
Code red white and blue should over rule these entrapments and money schemes
as a carpenter, i can say that most alternative building strategies are much more labor intensive than the current ones. Hay bales, dipped in a concrete/clay mix, will prove to be fire/water resistant, and more load bearing. Perhaps smaller bales , made of rice straw, and other “trash”, would make a very good building block in areas with cheap labor, for diy builders, and for moveable buildings, with insulation, interior and exterior finishes intact.