Natural Building Materials and Biomass Roofing

Sustainable Build of UK is a great source for construction material and techniques that advance the concept of autonomy and sustainability.  This post serves as an example of the great information one may find there directly, instead of us borrowing this information.  Hopefully it will remain available for time to come, but if you have any plans of using this information soon on a project it is advised to store and reproduce such information as we can not conclude it will always be available and free.

http://www.sustainablebuild.co.uk 

 Natural Building Materials and Biomass Roofing

Biomass roofing is the use of plant materials to build roofs. People from around the world have always used whatever vegetation was locally available and abundant to build their roofs. This cultural and environmental diversity has led to a wide range of roofing materials and styles, from the simple and ephemeral to the more durable and complex.

The Different Types of Biomass Roofing

Although hundreds of different plants have been used to roof houses, these can be classified into two main types: thatch and wood tiles.

Why Free? And why this manifesto may be of interest

We will refrain from an endless analysis and discussion of why this book, among zillions, may be of interest to us, but we have highlighted some key phrases that drew our attention.  It may be easy to bash the book or to praise it and we may do both in the future, but it may have to be done together with all of you who may have read it.  What's the value of us providing with a reason not to read it but remain confident that its criticism is as good as reading it yourselves?

Both myself and my courageous publishers, Permanent Publications, have decided to publish a free online version of this book, and the normal paperback version under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported license, for three reasons:

First, the ideas and practical tools contained within it should be free to whoever may find them useful, and not made falsely scarce by the mechanisms of the monetary economy.

Second, just as actions display our beliefs more honestly than our words, the ways in which ideas and practical tools are shared are at least as important as the words themselves. I wanted the medium to be fully aligned with the message.

Third, I wanted to release it under a Creative Commons licence because it felt fraudulent to have my name on the front of this book. As I said in the acknowledgements page of my last book, what are my words but “an accumulation of all that has come

Building a Home with the Earthbag Technique

Step-by-Step Earthbag Building
by Owen Geiger http://www.instructables.com/id/Step-by-Step-Earthbag-Building/

This Instructable explains each main step of construction for building vertical earthbag walls. Videos on my Earthbag Natural Building YouTube channel demonstrate the process.

For those who don’t know, earthbag building uses polypropylene rice bags or feed bags filled with soil or insulation that are stacked like masonry and tamped flat. Barbed wire between courses keeps bags from slipping and adds tensile strength. The final plastered walls look just like adobe structures. Thousands of people are now building with bags to create their dream homes, home offices, shops, resorts, rootcellars, storm cellars and survival shelters. Non-profit organizations are building schools, orphanages, emergency shelters and other structures.

I got involved with earthbag building when the Indian Ocean tsunami hit Southeast Asia in December, 2004. As the director of Builders Without Borders at that time, I searched all available affordable, sustainable building methods and decided building with bags was the most practical. They’re flood resistant (used for flood control), earthquake resistant (passed an ICBO shake table test), bullet and blast resistant (used for military bunkers), and now engineer and code approved plans are available. Just search for earthbag house plans on the Internet.