Berming the Earth Berm Cottage (Part 3)

April 14, 2023
Earth Berm Cottage, Natural Building

The cottage can officially be called the Earth Berm Cottage now. Check out our latest video here:

And here some stills with more details:

A pre-berm shot
Here I’m amassed a collection of rocks to start building a wall with
Ready for soil and gravel deliveries
This is 10 yards of gravel. We ultimately used a total 15-17 yards. I harvested soil from the property so I don’t know how many yards I used but I think 40 would be a good estimate.
I rented a mini-skid steer for the occasion. Jean got in contact with our arborist contact and he was able to drop off a load of wood chips for us too.
Backfilling around the earth tubes. I’ll be putting a ~16″ vertical layer of gravel against the wall of the house thus the forms to maintain the soil/gravel separation.
At this point we’ve taken the berm two feet up the wall. The fence stapled to the wall is there to protect the rock wool insulation as pour in gravel
Once I got to this point I extended the forms up, sistering 2x3s to stakes and adding more strips of OSB.
To insulate the above ground portion of the earth tube I wrapped the pipes in some leftover cushion foam. Once the berm is in place I might build and insulated enclosure around the pipes
Cassandra came out for a day to help out
My hoe broke(on the right) and my Mom ran down to McCoys and found this monster one
Here I’ve put together a low stone retaining wall on the south side
These vertical section of earth tubes extend down almost to the bottom of the barrel. Here I’m trying to pull them up slightly so they don’t get buried.
Seems like I’ve been going through a lot of insoles lately

Finished south side of the cottage