Camp Darkmoon

I use the same earthen plaster as I do on the outside. Just mud and straw, and then I hit it with a wet sponge until all the cracks are filled. It's as simple as that.

I use the same technique the smooth the walls.

For the floor, after great thought, I decide to cover it with gravel. It's unconventional for sure, but so is everything else. It's cheap and easy. Need I say more?

Comfy! I regretfully don’t have the time to make every surface perfectly smooth (see: giant cracks everywhere) because of a winter storm that chases me out of town for the season. But perhaps I’ll return in the spring to tidy things up.

What's often overlooked when planning a circular room is how hard it is to furnish. You can't push something into a corner, there are no corners. A couch doesn't fit flush against the wall, there are no flat walls. Curved furniture would be nice, sure. But that's rare to find, and difficult to create. And I'm not much of a carpenter. So what am I to do?

I have to think more abstractly. What is furniture? Do I need "furniture" or do I just need something to sit on? If I sit on it, does it become furniture? Interesting questions.

I realize that the buttress I built around my house also acts as a bench, and I can do the same thing on the inside. About 50 bags later, I have a bench. And then 40 more for a kitchen counter with a not-too-complicated wooden countertop with cheap lumber from the mill. Beautiful. I don't have to buy a couch or a kitchen counter now.

“Howdy”

As for the fireplace? That's a little trickier. I can't make it out of bags because the fire would melt the bags, so I buy an oil drum from my neighbor and, with a grinder, cut the drum in half and cut a door from the front. On top of that, I create a bunch of small adobe bricks and build a dome that funnels up to a steel duct which goes outside. The dome above the fireplace is built similarly to my house, so the process already feels familiar.

For insulation around the oil drum, I take inspiration from earthship architecture, and use empty cans as bricks. It’s a good thing I eat so many beans, I have a lot of cans to work with. 

(R.I.P. to the mailbox stove I built previously. It didn’t function well, and it will not be mourned) 

The adobe above the fireplace is a really amazing thing, let me tell you. What it does is absorb heat from the fire, and remain hot for hours. I go to bed with a fire burning, and when I wake up, the fire is gone, but the mass of adobe is still warm and radiating heat, and the house is warm. Very impressive. 

After lamenting about my failed stucco, I ask myself if I should retry what failed, or to attempt something new entirely. I decide on the latter because the purpose of this house is to be an experiment. I need to try something new, for new experience, and new knowledge. So I seek alternatives which, interestingly, leads me to old knowledge. 

Taos Pueblo

The Taos Pueblo is a huge inspiration to me - a village of earthen architecture, still thriving as it has for a thousand years. The indigenous people of any place know the most sustainable way to build. They’ve been building since before industrialism, before humans discovered how to damage the earth in unrepairable ways. Native Americans especially hold unimaginably high respect for the earth. Their way of life should be an aspiration for all of us. 

Their houses are constructed more sustainably than my own, because they use no synthetic materials. My house is made of plastic sandbags; theirs are made of adobe - raw earth, a truly recyclable material. I’ve already committed the sin of using plastic in my construction, but I can redeem myself by using natural materials to replace my failed stucco. And so I examine the architecture of the pueblo village. It’s all composed of earth. Earthen bricks, earthen mortar, and earthen plaster used as a finish. It remarkably durable, and looks fantastic. And it’s all made of mud and straw. That’s all it is. Mud and straw. “How can your method be so simple?” one may ask. And a Native American may answer “How can yours be so complicated?” 

Much like kneading a dough, I create a volcano of earth, straw, and water, and begin stomping. I mix with my feet using the weight of my body. I pull up the tarp to fold the mass and stomp some more, until the mixture is homogenous. Then I wrap the tarp over and let it sit for a day. This allows for every particle of earth to become saturated, and for the straw to be flexible. 

Soil comes mostly in two parts: sand and clay. If we look at the plaster on a molecular level, the sand is the brick, and the clay is the mortar. Clay is the glue that holds sand together. An unfortunate fact of nature is that clay shrinks when it dries. Shrinking means cracking, and for an earthen plaster that doesn’t crack, the amount of clay should be 1/5 or less. Unfortunately, my soil is about 1:1 sand and clay, which means that the material will definitely crack when it dries. How do I combat this? With straw. 

Straw doesn’t prevent the clay in the material from shrinking, but it does hold the material together after it cracks. From there, the cracks can be filled with a very wet mixture of earth about the consistency of milk (you’d be surprised at how much earth you can add to water before it gets thick). I apply it with a sponge like one would wash a car. This is much like the technique of burnishing used by ceramic artists. A few repetitions of this creates a smooth and nearly watertight surface. Perhaps a dozen more would mimic a glazed piece of pottery. To be honest, I have no idea if this is exactly what the natives do, but it produces a similar result. 

Looking good!

After spending nearly a year away from my dome, I’m disappointed to return and see it in this state of disrepair. The paint is peeling and the stucco is crumbling, but the house as a whole is in perfect condition. And better so, I know exactly what I did wrong. 

When using lime to create stucco, it is imperative to slake the lime before use. What is slaking? It’s another word for soaking. Why do two similar words with identical meanings exist? Because English is a terrible language. But what’s more important is that I did not slake my lime, and that my stucco is brittle and useless. What I should have done is poured my lime into a big barrel full of water, mixed it up, and let it sit for a few days before using it as an ingredient in my stucco. Lesson learned. 

Wow! That looks good!

I chose a latex exterior paint to cover and protect my house. It wasn't an extremely conscious decision; I chose it because it was available at the Habitat for Humanity store in large quantities at a low price. Many people like to boast that earthbag is elegant in its ability to absorb and release moisture in cooperation with the weather. And although the idea of having a living, breathing house is beautiful and poetic, I want to do all I can to make it as indestructible as possible. I don't want the walls absorbing water. This isn't based off any science, it's just a personal decision. So if I made a terrible mistake, let me know!

I haven't spoken about the windows and the door yet. I cut the windows myself from large panes of glass I got secondhand. Nothing fancy. There's no frame around the glass, just rubber strips covering the gaps. They open and close the way windows should. And the door is made mostly out of pallet wood and some lumber from the hardware store. I had to make it myself since it is a unique size.

The interior is far from finished, but here are some picture of the inside. The rocket stove pictured is made from a mailbox, a good alternative to buying a real stove. And the dark triangle door leads to my bedroom which is much too dark to get a good a picture of. In the future I'll install a light in there.

Happy homey dome.

It feels great to take a step back and say "Hey, I made that! It's a real, liveable house!" I can't believe it's only been a few months since I chose my spot and drew the lines in the ground. I built a house. I built a HOUSE! Mostly alone! In one summer! Unbelievable!

Big thanks to everyone who helped me along the way, either through hands on work or remote support. I can't thank you enough for your involvment and I hope you took away something valuable from your experience.

The weather is getting cold and I’m leaving for now, but I plan on returning in the Spring to finish up. 

I attached chicken wire all around the surface of my house. This I did with pliers by looping tie wire through the bags. The purpose of the chicken wire is to ensure that the mud won't slip down while I apply it or fall off when it cracks. Cracking is expected and is not an issue since this layer won't be visible when the house is complete. The main purpose of the mud layer is to fill the gaps between each row of bags. It doesn't have to be pretty, it's just to minimize the amount of stucco I need. I'd rather fill the gaps with mud because mud is cheaper to make.

For water, I bought myself a big water tank and called a local Mesa man to come fill it up. I myself don't have a membership to the neighborhood's water well, or a truck to haul water anyway, so I get my water delivered by someone who does.

I've seen people apply mud to earthbags with a trowel or simply by hand, which is the obvious method, but Atulya K Bingham wrote about throwing mud balls at the walls. I tried that because it sounded like fun, and unsurprisingly, it worked great! Better than any other method of application, and much more exciting. And for the hard to reach places, I didn't need a longer ladder, I just needed better aim. But my mud is mostly clay and very, very sticky. It adheres better to the hands than any other surface. Once the mud is flung, it's best to leave it alone. Any attempt to adjust or smooth it will only make it worse. And thus, I laid it on thick, unnecessarily thick, without spreading it out. In hindsight, I could have used a lot less mud by adding sand to the mix or using more water. That way I could've been more precise and efficient with my materials, but that is knowledge I hadn't learned until afterward. So I'll have to do better next time.

The next step was stucco.

Nearby is a dry river on national forest land that I was told I could go to and gather sand. So after a few expeditions down a few forest roads, two-tire trails through the sage flats, I found a route that goes down to the sandy bottom of the dry river's little canyon, full of sunflowers and smooth rocks, and tracks leading to where the good sand is. It's evident that this is the place. A free resource for sand!

And as for clay, I used my own soil. It has a high clay content. Any impurities are minimal and won't matter much anyway.

The first layer of stucco, I lathered on with my (gloved) hands. It created a rough surface, good for the next layer to stick to. For the second layer, I used a trowel to spread it smooth.

Hot tip: wet the surface first.

The first batch of stucco, I made with a recipe I found from a quick Google search (5 sand, 1 lime, ¼ cement) which didn't stick well and cracked when it dried. I nearly completed the whole first layer with this stuff before I got curious and started experimenting. Eventually I came up with the perfect mix (5 sand, 1 clay, 1 lime). The clay fills the voids between sand particles, and the lime's flexibility helps it stay in tact while drying. No cement! And no cracks! It's incredibly sticky, holds its form, and doesn't slide down the wall. Such a pleasure to work with.

Lime is more environmentally friendly than cement, and more forgiving because it doesn't turn rock hard immediately like cement does. It gives you more time to shave off unwanted globs and redo areas you aren't completely satisfied with. The only disadvantage to lime is that it takes much longer to reach it's full hardness. Cement takes two weeks, lime takes 3 months. So it's important to keep it safe from harm while it cures.

I was told not to underestimate the amount of time it takes to plaster the walls. I knew it wouldn't be fast. The work is much easier, yes, it feels like a vacation compared to digging and bagging, but it consumes a great deal of time as well. About half as much as creating the structure. It's slow work and it's not as exciting as watching walls go up, but it's important and worth the time it takes.

The hard work is done! And there I am sitting in my bedroom doorway! It's made of 1787 bags. It took 60 working days. That's somewhere around 300 hours. Pretty impressive looking back on it!

The space is magnificent. It's much larger than I expected it to be when I first designed it. There's still a great deal of work to be done before the house is finished, but it's already liveable in its current state. So I decided to move in!

Having shelter after living in a tent for two months feels incredible. Unlike a tent, a breeze won't shakes the walls and wake me up, it doesn't turn into an oven when the sun hits it, it blocks the sound of my neighbors' dogs, it doesn't flood, and it's bulletproof! (not that it needs to be)

The bedroom (small dome) has no windows which creates a void-like darkness inside. It doesn't take much to illuminate it, a candle is overkill. No sound enters either, because the walls are a foot thick. And for the same reason, I get absolutely no cell reception. Like a cave, its earthen composition regulates the temperature day and night. The space is immaculate: dark, quiet, cool, and out of touch. The lack of sensory stimulation is a profound sensation, meditative and introspective, exactly as intended. For the first time all summer, I overslept.

A big beehive! I finished this dome first so I could learn as much as I could before tackling the larger one. Laying the bags gets tricky near the top.

I love triangles. They're easy to make and fit well to the curve of the walls, both horizontally and vertically.

The beams are for storage lofts. I don't think they're strong enough to support the weight of a person, but they've been helping me keep my balance while standing on top of the structure. They also allow me to elevate my compass to make measuring easier.

A buttress lining my house will provide additional support as well as a nice bench to sit on. I laid these bags side by side instead of lengthwise. It's a lot of bags, but it'll look nice. And I'm glad it's finally completed because its progress felt so slow compared to the walls.

The central volume of earth is all removed, save for small pillars in the middle of each dome, which are needed to hold the stakes in place. Those are part of a compass system I use to measure the walls as I build. I'll go into detail about that later.

Remember the solid white layer of earth a few feet below the surface? I learned from the locals that it's called "caliche" - a naturally forming type of concrete. Not as strong as concrete, but a nuisance nonetheless. Thank goodness I don't have to deal with that stuff anymore. Swinging a pickaxe all day is hard on the hands.

But I've made a great discovery. Between the caliche and the top layer of dust lies about one foot of perfectly saturated soil. Sweet red earth, rich in clay, always still wet from previous rains. Wet enough so that it clumps together when squeezed, but doesn't stick to the hand. I don't have to add any water to it. Conserving water is important here on the Mesa and I'm glad I found a way to avoid using water in this step. Not only that, but it saves a lot of time.

Did you know I live right next to a lumber mill? I can get chunky pieces of wood for not much money at all. And although I've never been much of a woodworker, some carpentry is required here, and I'm thankful I have such a great source of lumber, because I'll probably make mistakes with it. I decided the best way to enter my bedroom is by crawling through a triangle. And why not? It's my house, and my design. Originally, I planned on it being a circle, but… triangles are easier to make. I might keep the rhythm going by making the windows triangular too. That's something I need to decide on soon.

As for the plaster, I attached chicken wire to the surface and smeared mud on the walls. What you see here is just one layer. I'm expecting the finished walls to be two or three layers thick. Simple mud will cover the inside of the house, but for the outside, I'll add cement to the mix so it doesn't wash away in the rain. I want the outer shell to be solid, not only for weather resistance, but so that I may paint it when I'm finished. Like a giant Easter egg.

Great news! Digging was the hard part. Everything now feels like a breeze comparatively. Even the central volume of earth is easy to remove now that the depth is established. Digging forward is much easier than digging down.

My walls are at ground level, an impressive amount of work to have been done already. Over 400 bags so far! Unfortunately it's not completely apparent since most of it is underground. But once the walls grow higher, progress will be much easier to see. About 5 full days of laying bags brought me this far. That's very encouraging. I could have all the bags laid in a matter of weeks, but I won't because that would be strenuous and unnecessary. I have the whole summer at my disposal. No need to rush.

On the outside of the walls is a coat of pond liner. Perhaps it isn't completely necessary, but it brings me peace of mind to know that water won't be touching the sub-terranian walls of my home. That stuff is not cheap and should be well worth the cost.

I'm choosing to use standard sized bags rather than the long tubes that are used at Cal-Earth. This is because I'm doing construction mostly alone and, although the long bags are more efficient, they are best used with a team of at least 2 people. As an lone builder, small bags are the most practical.

Also, those cardboard tubes you see - those are to hold the bags open while I fill them. They're incredibly helpful.

After hearing that some people got permits to build their homes here, I figured I'd give it a try. Wouldn't it be cool to have an address? To build a house that isn't off-grid? After all, I have detailed blueprints and a certificate of earth building experience. How hard could it be?

So I walked into the courthouse with all my papers, ready to teach the ways of earthbag and prove my aptitude. I grabbed a form and began to fill it out, but was immediately stopped by the second line. First came my name, and then my address. "Well, shoot!" I thought. I don't have one of those. "How can I apply for a permit if I don't have an address? I'm living in a tent on my property."

They said "Don't tell us that." Hah. It turns out I'm not allowed to camp on my property while I build. It has to be in an RV or something. And even then, I still need a mailing address, and they won't accept a PO box for the application. I can however get a temporary address assigned to the property to use during construction, but it won't be recognized by the UPS or the DMV or most importantly the people in charge of giving me a building permit. So what's the point of that!

Homeless people aren't allowed to build homes. Go figure.

The outline of my home is complete. These trenches are where the walls will be placed, and they're all dug to the depth at which I'll be laying the bags. The middle sections will be removed as I build to create the cavity that is my living space. And I'm wondering: maybe that volume of soil will be the amount needed to fill the bags. We'll see.

The earth here is very strong. Below the first layer of dust, there's about a foot of saturated soil, then below that is bone-dry white clay. That layer is tough! Shovels are useless at that level; I had to use a pickaxe to chip my way down. Breaking up the clay and scooping up the rubble felt less like digging, and more like mining. What an interesting challenge it was - it took a whole week! Some friends helped too, even after learning how un-fun it is to dig this way. Thanks, friends.

Here's my bedroom: a teepee. And my kitchen: a wire shelf. My stove: made of bricks. My fridge: a cooler underground. And my toilet: a hole (not shown). What more could I need?

My old tent had a few patches in it, the zippers hardly worked, and just before coming out here, I spilled gas on it. It was time for an upgrade. Living in a teepee feels very fitting here. I've already gotten a few compliments on it, and I must say it's a luxury to have a tent I can stand up straight in.

The first order of business was finishing the road that leads to my property (the one I started before getting snowed out in my previous post). About 500' worth of sagebrush to dig up, plus an area around my campsite, and my home site, and paths between the three. This took a few days and provided me with an abundance of firewood. But about half of the brush I dug up, along with some pallets, and help from a friend, were woven into a wind barricade beside my tent. It's beautiful! And astonishingly effective.

I did some research to learn more about the wind here, as it is one of my biggest adversaries aside from the endless sagebrush that must be dug. The culprit is the afternoon heat. It causes the surface air to rise and mix with the gales above, which in turn creates havoc below. That's why afternoons are a blustery mess and nights are cool and silent, tranquil enough to hear a drum circle in the distance (I didn't believe the rumors, but it's real, and I must visit it sometime). The wind is reliable and it runs on a schedule. How convenient! During the afternon, I can leave my tent's windows open to let the wind blow through while I take a nap in the shade. Then when it dies down, I can continue working.

It feels good to be here. I don't have a schedule, and I don't have any deadlines. The days are getting hot enough for seistas to be mandaroty. The nights are chilly, as expected. My solar system is providing much more energy than I need. And to my surprise, cellular service is better than one would expect.

I wanted to spend a whole week on my site. Dip my toes in and acclimate before diving in full time.

The first thing I had to do was get my car to my property. The road to my lot didn’t exist yet, so I had to make one. Driving over the brush a few times would have done it, but I opted to do it all by hand with my trusty mattock. The road turned out much cleaner this way, plus I needed the exercise after the long drive here. I’m thankful I trained my back and shoulders for this type of work because, after spending a few days digging up shrubs, all that was sore were my hands. This is encouraging, because building an earthbag house is much harder work than chopping up brush.  

I set up some pallets to break the wind and built a brick rocket stove to cook on, both of which work marvelously. You can see a little bit of it in the picture below.

Spending time here is nice. My schedule is simply to make food, work a little, make more food, work a little more, food, sleep, and repeat. Purely Serene. I was quickly becoming comfortable with this new lifestyle. 

Unfortunately, on the third day, the weather became less than ideal and I had to call it quits. The forecast predicted some snow, but I didn’t anticipate my tent being crushed by the weight of it. I can’t get any work done like this. How disappointing.

It’s not too unusual for Taos to still get snow this time of year, but this is far from the “breaking rocks in the hot sun” image I had pictured for myself. Although in a few weeks, afternoon temperatures should be up in the 80′s. I’ll take that over snow any day. Thankfully, I haven’t fully moved out of my apartment yet, or else I'd still be out there freezing with no place to retreat to. Hopefully this is the last time I’ll be seeing snow this season. 

I took another trip down to Taos to locate and stake the boundaries on my land. I considered hiring a land surveyor to to this, but after a bit of research I reckoned I could do it well enough with a compass and long tape measure. And I was right! The process is pretty straightforward - Start at this intersection at the road, go 400′ south, pound a stake in, 170′ west, another stake, and so on, until my lot is clearly outlined. Then I double checked with my phone’s gps (which is accurate up to 10′) and was pretty darn impressed by how well I measured everything. Great job, Harry. The markers might be a few feet off, but I saved myself a few hundred dollars. 

Because of the inaccuracy, I’ll avoid building anything near the property lines; I don’t want to get into land wars with future inhabitants. But as of now, my closest neighbor is over 500′ away, and all the lots adjacent to mine are unclaimed. 

This is the desert alright. It’s big and flat and full of sage. 

And it smells wonderful. 

I cleared a space, drew the outline of my house in the ground, and sat inside. In that exact moment, the feeling hit me. This is the spot. This is the soil. This is the circle I will spend many days in. I imagined the walls forming around me like an earthen womb and in that moment, to describe it simply, I was maniacally joyful. This land, I thought. This land is my land! This is the American dream; I’m a pioneer! 

I cooked supper over a fragrant sagebrush fire and was pleasantly lulled to sleep by distant coyote coos.  

If you’re interested, maybe because you want to learn, or you’re between jobs/semesters/apartments and want to do something wild and free, or you’re sick of modern life and you want to escape it for a while (guilty), or maybe you just want to hang out somewhere remote and serene, come on down! I can't offer much as payment, but I promise to keep you housed and fed and share my knowledge so that you too can someday take on a similar mission. We can treat it like a work exchange program, kind of like WWOOFing but minus the farm. Anyone who helps out will immediately be my best friend forever.

I'll be camping on site the whole time. My plan is to set up some tarps for coverage, make a composting toilet, cook on a brick stove, sleep in a tent, bathe in a bucket, just get really, wholly immersed in this build. I want to be the project. Hard work and sunshine. Leathery dark skin and shredded muscles. That’s the dream.