Today I am going to share my experience with Earth Bag Building, a method which builds on the traditional practice of Atakpamé construction, a process of hand packing clay soil to form mud walls, which has been used for thousands of years throughout rural communities.

Overall the Earth Bag building method is a do-it-yourself approach, which will enable rural families to come together and produce stronger sturdy wall masses that continue to keep them cooler and better protected.

The technique incorporates a variation of the rammed earth process known as flexible formed rammed earth and allows walls system to be erected without excessive wooden formworks.

With the Earth Bag building method large polypropylene bags, the same type used for rice sacks are filled with the common laterite (clay soil) used for traditional mud buildings. The bags are then arranged in well laid out wall course and compacted through a manual ramming process with large mallets. Each additional row of sacks is staggered to allow overlapping and lines of barbwire are used to create a scratch bond in between each course that helps prevent slippage as the walls rise. At the lintel level the wall system is structurally reinforced with a continuous concrete bond beam and columns are used where necessary. The completed wall system is then rendered smooth with a final cement based plaster creating a conventional wall finish.

-This process of sustainable, eco building is being promoted both as an advancement of the traditional methods of Atakpamé construction and as an alternative to standard practices of solid, sand-crete block construction done in rural communities