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How to build with earthbag

by Jen Feigin | Dec 4, 2014 | Natural building materials and techniques

Earthbag building is one of Endeavour’s favourite building techniques. We’ve used it for foundations on many projects, and have built an entire buried root cellar with this material. We’ve put together our experience with earth bag in a photo series....

Building with Hempcrete or Hemp-Lime

by Jen Feigin | Nov 2, 2014 | Hempcrete, Natural building materials and techniques

A group of lucky participants was treated to an excellent weekend workshop on building with hempcrete (or hemp-lime), led by UK architect and hempcrete pioneer, Tom Woolley. Tom is the author of Hemp Lime Construction and Low Impact Building, and has been involved in...

High-straw earthen plaster recipe

by Jen Feigin | Sep 19, 2014 | Construction Blogs, Natural building materials and techniques, Natural plaster, Recipes, Teachers' Union offices

It’s no secret that we love clay plasters at Endeavour, and the best case scenario is being able to use a clay soil right from the building site. It just so happens that we lucked into this for the teachers’ union office project! After digging some test...

Framing systems for teachers’ union office

by Jen Feigin | Aug 17, 2014 | Construction Blogs, Natural building materials and techniques, Straw bale building, Teachers' Union offices

Wood framing is a conventional building practice that we use quite frequently at Endeavour. For the teachers’ union project, we are using wood framing for both the floor system and the exterior walls. The walls and floors may not look very different from...

Earthbag foundation for floor system

by Jen Feigin | Aug 17, 2014 | Construction Blogs, Natural building materials and techniques, Teachers' Union offices

In addition to the Durisol stem wall foundation, our project for the teachers’ union office includes two long sections of earthbag foundation to support the floor joist spans inside the building. The inherent insulation value of the Durisol blocks made them our...

Helical pier foundation

by Jen Feigin | Aug 17, 2014 | Building Product Reviews, Construction Blogs, Natural building materials and techniques, Teachers' Union offices

The timber frame portion of our project for the teachers’ union rests outside the walls of the building, requiring individual foundation piers for each of the 14 posts. Typically, these would be poured concrete piers each with its own wide footing, resulting in...