While I had to mute this video myself (sorry Dragonforce) I did enjoy watching the time lapse construction of this tiny earthbag house.
“Watch us build an Earthbag House in Fairbanks, AK! Music by Dragonforce! This time lapse covers two months of building with 2 people.”
As you can see the dirt in the middle was bagged and added to each course of bags. Not always is the onsite dirt ideal for earthbags but sometimes you get lucky. Between each course barbed wire is added and temporarily held down with rocks. The level of each course of bags is measured regularly as well as the window and door rough bucks. This is common in all masonry construction.
I assume the owner-builders extended the walls at the corners to add strength. Strait earthen walls like this typically require some perpendicular supports at regular intervals. I assume the region this earthbag home was built gets a lot of snow, so it makes sense to add some extra support. I also imagine the owner-builders will be adding a pitched roof to this little cabin to help support a high snow load.
My last thought/observation is that a high thermal mass cabin in a cold climate might be a bit of a mistake only because they take time to warm up. Once warm they hold their temperature well, especially if the exterior is insulated. For a short-visit cabin I think a well-insulated wood frame building might work better.
via Earthbag Timelapse – YouTube.
This house isn’t exactly tiny at 855 square feet but it’s an excellent of an efficient and low cost way of enclosing living space.
Owen Geiger recently posted this small cabin design on his 
Two earthbag home projects are underway in Haiti and are being blogged about at 
Some students from the University of Maryland will be spending a week in Haiti demonstrating how to build these sturdy earthbag shelters.
The folks at the 
Dr. Owen Geiger, the Director of the Geiger Research Institute of Sustainable Building, posted one of my design concepts on his 
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