Arc House (click to enlarge)
Specifications: 672 sq. ft. interior, 1 bedroom, 1 bath, Footprint: 21′ x 51′
Description: Defined by an arc, this gently curving house uses passive solar design to capture the sun’s energy during the day and then store it in its interior mass to stabilize interior temperatures. Features include living roof and earth berm design.
Arc House (click to enlarge)
Earthbag House Plans 
This design was inspired by a dream I had. In the dream, people were asking for advice on how to build simple houses. This is one of my recommendations. Small roundhouses are also highly recommended.
I love your websites and the work you are doing. It’s a great resource of information, and a great way to go to reduce consumption of earth’s precious resources when building. I’m hoping to one day own a few acres and build an earthbag home. But I’m young and broke, so it’ll be years from now.
I love this design. I keep being drawn back to it. I was thinking a combination of this and a round structure would be nice. Have a dome/roundhouse on the left side, bottom floor could be a sunken living room with a loft for an office above. The extra room the dome/roundhouse provides would allow for an indoor grow bed. There could be an arched doorway joining the dome with the arc house floorplan, but without the arc house’s living room.
Sounds great. Most clients are combining my basic plans — joining two or more designs — to meet their needs. This, however, is a new combination. I like it!
However, I always caution against building below grade. It’s very common to experience flooding problems, even in dry areas. All it takes is one heavy rain and your house will be under water. It happens a lot.
Love it 🙂
Could it be a nice alternative to an Earthship ? Those are expensive, complicated, and laborious (in my opinion) and David Wright AIA considers the tires to be toxic, regardless of how they are covered.
I like this design a lot more 🙂
You can build earthships faster and easier with earthbags, and there’s no worry of toxicity from tires. (I don’t trust the claims that they’re safe. They smell horrible to me.) People are already building earthbag earthships: http://earthbagbuilding.wordpress.com/2010/11/06/half-moon-earthbag-earthship/
We’ll be reporting on one in Belgium soon.
How difficult would it be to stretch the design so it is wider on the 21′ footprint axis and extend a room into a earthberm? would that cause a drastic shift structural stability?
How far can you build an Earthbag wall before you need a beam running lengthwise through the building?
You can go larger. My designs are minimalistic to keep costs low. You don’t necessarily need a beam down the center at all if you use roof trusses.
I like this design a lot I’m wondering about building a similar design here in Zimbabwe. We can have huge storms in the rainy season, does a flat shed roof protect the house enough in this case? I also really want to use zero cement in the house. Do you always need to have a concrete bond beam ontop of the walls?
It best to face the low edge of the roof toward approaching storms (as much as possible). Balance this with solar gain. You may have to compromise.
You could build a wooden bond beam, but curved ones are difficult to build out of wood. You can do it if you use lots of short pieces with angled cuts.
Also, you’ll need to resolve the front door/picture window area, because of the long span. Get advice from a local carpenter.