For the past few months Iulia has been clearing out the summer kitchen in preparation for renovation. We haven't started because I've been reluctant to get into this project. During this period of my reluctance we did get more clear about the general plans for the renovation. We also got a set of 4 used [...]
Rainwater Harvesting Swale
This project was seeded 3 or 4 years ago. I think it was early spring, following a wet but warm winter. This means that snow melted quickly and saturated the soils. So that when spring rains came there was a lot of runoff. This effect was amplified greatly by the almost bare surfaces of the [...]
Shiny Clay Wall Finishing
I enjoyed this video very much - it made me want to get back to clay: https://youtu.be/wTY6arzNs24 It gave me confidence that my experiments in the earthbag cellar were in the right direction - and that with additional refinement, wonderful results can be achieved with earth!It confirmed how important the material mix is in achieveing [...]
[Webinar] Building with Earthbags: our experience with the cellar
Dear friends,In the last 2 years we built our cellar from earth bags. It was mostly the two of us... helped along the way a bit by volunteers and friends. We learned a lot, people started to ask questions. This is how Iulia started the Romania: EarthBags Building / Constructii din saci umpluti cu pamant [...]
Earthbag Cellar: Shelves and … Food!
The shelves felt like a small scale "industrial" project ... mass production and assembly of parts. I had already charred a few boards in preparing for the shelves. Now it was time to cut them up and make them into frames. Then piled them up for charring the remaining parts at the "charring station" just [...]
Earthbag Cellar: Cellar Doors
If like me you enjoyed Donnie Darko then you know that Cellar Door is arguably the most beautiful expression in the English language. This is a story of not one, but two cellar doors! It started with a vision of a nice arched door that fills the arched doorway. I built the frame, stuggled to [...]
Earthbag Cellar – Ventilation Chimney
This seemingly small part of the project turned out to be a place where I immersed myself more than I expected. The initial objective was to protect the ventilation exhaust pipes from sun (they are made of plastic), rain and rodents. But as it came into being I felt it was a surprisingly prominent aesthetic [...]
Earthbag Cellar – Structure Done(-ish)
When I thought I'd finished with the internal walls I decided to play around with some of the cracks by filling them with clay-slip. What started out with a small local (small spot) experiment became another layer of finishing on all the walls. In the small room (sorry no pictures!) that experiment was expanded to [...]
Earthbag Cellar: Earthen Finishing
A couple of months ago Iulia posted on a local (our village) Facebook page that we are looking for help with the cellar construction - women only! One woman expressed her interest and finally, in the last stretch of earthwork the circumstances matured for her to join us. Speranta was with us for a few [...]
Earthbag Cellar: Cob Bench, More Earth Finishing & Final Burial
We finally got around to converting the three stumps of wood in the retaining wall into a bench. Long pieces of wood were laid length-wise (and some anchored down with bent nails). ... and then covered with cob: ... on top of which another layer of cuttings was laid out (to extend the width of [...]