Is there a proportion of earth to pumice that allows earthbag construction without additional wood, steel, or bamboo reinforcement? What specific heat and thermal conductivity would this mix have?
You can certainly mix pumice with earth, and the folks who wrote “Building with Earthbags” advocate this, but I don’t really see any advantage to doing so. This severely limits the insulating qualities of the pumice. Either of these techniques, however, require very little wood, steel or bamboo reinforcement. Usually just some barbed wire placed between the courses of earthbags is all that is needed to make very durable walls. I do not have technical number for heat and thermal conductivity for these systems. My empirical evaluation of pure pumice is about R-2/inch for the insulative value, and the more earth that is added, the less this number would be. Q: What do you think of using styrofoam (currently not recyclable in Seattle) as fill or partial fill in earth bags? I would think the insulation factor would be better and the material could be used for something other than land fill. I don’t know what the structural effect would be of using such a light weight material. A: Using styr
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