Quick Earthbag House Update

It’s September 17th, 2015…I thought I’d pop in with a quick update on our earthbag house project.

We’re making slow but steady progress! One of the big blocks we’ve faced this year is the lack of extra help like we had last year. We have a part-time helper and Keith’s sisters both took time off work and helped for a few days, which was wonderful! We’ve put up more ads and are hoping to find more workers soon.

Meanwhile, Keith has been working on the roof over the cistern room, installing a UV filter on the cistern, and having a load of water hauled out to fill it (2,513 gallons were delivered!). I’ll write a whole post about the water soon…stay tuned.

The water truck delivering 2,513 gallons of water into our cistern. Eventually we'll be filling it with rainwater! — “The Water Boy” delivering 2,513 gallons of water into our cistern. Eventually we’ll be filling it with rainwater!

Keith’s dad, Lee, also built some stairs for the cistern room.

Stairs from entryway to upper level of cistern room. They are hinged so they can be lifted up and allow access to the downstairs area.

With the help of Keith’s sisters we also made a lot of papercrete with our new papercrete tow mixer and sprayed it inside the cistern room and around on several of the outside walls.

Denise sprays papercrete with a mortar sprayer onto the walls of the lower level of the cistern room.

After using the mortar sprayer we filled in the gaps by hand.

Here I am spraying papercrete over the door entering the cistern room.

There are several new layers of earthbags on the walls, and Keith is especially making good progress on the east wall.

Keith putting another layer of bags on the east wall of the house.

Keith has also been working on the roof design and recently placed an order for all of the roofing materials, which will be delivered along with the trusses in a couple of weeks. We’ll all be very excited to see the roof going up!

Last but not least, it looks like we may finally be getting an excavating company out soon to install the septic system. It has been a challenge to find any responsive companies in our area to come out and do this. We’re excited about this because not only will it allow us to finish the plumbing in the house as we’re ready, but Keith and I will have full hookups for our motorhome, too!

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