I’ve known about hyperadobe building for a long time. I have wanted to give it a shot since I first heard about it. Recently, I got my chance when a friend expressed interest in building a hyperadobe tiny house on her property. For a long time it was difficult to find a supplier in the US, until I discovered that Volm industries carries it.
Hyperadobe uses tubes of raschel warp knit mesh (think stout onion bag material). This allows you to do long, unbroken courses. Also, unlike earthbag, you don’t need barbed wire between the courses. This saves a good bit of time and money, and more than a few ouchies.
We tried a homemade dirt feeder first, before we discovered that an EZ bagger, made for sand bags, was quicker to put the tubing on and easier to use. I found a pretty good sale on EZ baggers here.
We have been using clay and sand subsoil. We wet it a bit before putting it into the mesh (so it will stick together) and we have been moving it from the pile to the wall with partially filled 5 gallon buckets (They are too heavy when full – don’t do it!)
I selected the 12″ hyperadobe roll because when plastered, the finished walls will be a foot thick, and in most cases, I don’t see needing more than that. It also takes significantly less dirt to fill up than the 16 or 18 inch. If you can imagine 3D printing an earthen home by hand, this is basically it. We don’t even have to cut the material when we reach frames, you merely have the row turn around and start another one.
As with an earthbag home, we still hammer rebar in with a t-post driver to add extra stability to the wall.
We are having our next hyperadobe tiny house workshop on October 17th to 19th in beautiful Marshall, NC, during the peak of leaf season. The workshop is currently on deep discount. Click here to sign up or find out more.
Thanks for reading!
Morgan
