Earthbag Arches

One feature that Keith had designed into the earthbag house we are building is the arch. We have two arches in this house.

The first arch is built into the support buttress on the north wall. Buttresses add strength to a straight wall and are required every 10 to 12 feet in earthbag homes with straight walls. (Round earthbag homes don’t need them.) This arch will lead into a screened-in back patio once the house is complete.

The second arch is a small doorway from one of the bedrooms into the cistern/utility room/tornado shelter, primarily to make a way to access that space without the need to go outside in case of a tornado or bad weather.

We completed the archway into the cistern room in 2014 along with the rest of that room. The patio archway was just completed a couple of weeks ago along with the last of the earthbag walls.

This video shows the progression of the patio archway built this year, and also shows Keith removing the form from the utility room archway, so you can see what it looks like when the form comes back out. Enjoy!

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