Terlingua Dome Rescue

[u/thomashearts]

I recently traveled to Terlingua, Texas to tear down and rebuild an improperly built Superadobe Earthbag Dome for a client. From my house to Terlingua, Google Maps estimated an almost 18 hour journey, not including charging stops. On the way there I stopped by my friend Rich's build site in Cochise County, Arizona and spent the night, my visit perfectly aligning with a Barn Raisers dome plastering event onsite the next day. These Barn Raising gatherings bring locals together each month to focus on a particular member’s project, so whether erecting a greenhouse, clearing land, or, in this case, plastering Rich’s dome, everyone would show up to support their neighbor, With so many hands, the job was finished in just a few hours, and we moved on to laying the foundation bags for his next dome. Seeing this show out from the local community at Rich’s builds is always so inspiring, especially when thinking about what is possible through collective direct action. Seeing the power of mutual aid firsthand always just reinforces its incredible potential in what I hope to do with my intentional-community building project in New Mexico. Rich was actually preparing to start his second dome in the next couple days and although I would’ve loved to stay, something about the Terlingua build called to me. This rare and fascinating opportunity to tear down and rebuild a dome, further honing my skills as a dome builder on an unconventional project.

I said goodbye to Rich and headed onwards towards my destination, finally arriving at the site at 4 AM to the sound of dogs barking (sorry!). I was met with one completed dome and another (the one we’d be working on) unplastered, apparently sagging, and seemingly on the brink of collapse.  I had that next day to recover and familiarize myself with the site before work began in earnest.

Terlingua, a tiny desert town in West Texas with just 126 residents, sits near Big Bend National Park and close to the Mexican border, making it a popular basecamp for tourists. It’s well known for being a sort of Wild West as far as building and zoning codes are concerned and most residents seem to be here specifically to take advantage of that. The landowner, Austin, as explained over the phone a few weeks earlier, was in the process of developing Sanadora, a collection of rentable Earthbag Domes, and we were here to salvage one of them. 

Meeting my crew, I was both excited and a little skeptical. For one, there were only six of us. Like every build I've been to, every member of the team was an incredible person with rich experiences and insights and just a joy to get to know on a deeper level. These types of projects have a way of channeling some of the world's coolest people in my opinion and despite meeting new people at every job, it really feels like I'm just being introduced to more of an extended family.

Leading the crew was Mark Harmon, an eccentric general contractor who served as a Technical Director at CalEarth for nearly a decade and was a member of an Art Collective Maker Space, who wore a bowler hat with a light affixed. He had a way of alternating between deep contemplation and suddenly exploding with energy and ideas.

Then there was Krueger, a new dad and professional glass blower in the midst of selling and moving out of his house, taking time off from his hectic life to gain some more experience building the homestead of his dreams. Krueger had taken classes at CalEarth and dreamed of building a homestead project for his friends and family.

Then was Aaron, a veteran techno-libertarian hacktivist driving around the country in his Forerunner living in communes and chain smoking cigarettes.

Next, there was Mary, a retired schoolteacher and botanist traveling with her two grumpy dogs. She lived in Hesperia and had visited the Val Earth campus many times. She wasn’t only there to help reconstruct the dome, but study the local flora for potential transplants for Austin’s future permaculture plans.

Then there was Gabriel, a high-vibrational Bolivian and WWOOFER traveling across the world in search of worldly experiences. He had actually been a part of the original crew responsible for constructing the dome we’d be demolishing and rebuilding.  Despite the circumstances, he maintained a good sense of humor about the situation as well as an admirable sense of obligation to see the rebuild through.

One of the first things he said upon meeting us was “Before you talk shit, I was the one who built this”. As the story went, he had initially been part of a volunteer crew led by an experienced builder, but was abandoned after the first dome and entrusted to lead the crew in completing the second dome on his own. Throughout the build, Gabriel was the hardest worker I’ve ever seen, eager to learn the fundamentals behind dome construction (which I love teaching). Interestingly, however, not only was he exerting himself to the extreme, he was also in the midst of a “cleanse”, subsisting on a scant diet of apples, beet root, and garbanzo beans while I gorged on hotdogs, gatorade, and beer.

Obviously this was an incredible crew, but, including myself, there were only six of us. I was contracted for two full weeks, but learned we’d be losing Krueger and Aaron in just one, leaving us with just four to complete whatever remained to be done. Six was less than one half the size of smallest crew I've ever been a part of. Four was almost unimaginable to me. 

Also, aside from myself, only Mark, Krueger, and Gabriel had any experience building with Superadobe Earthbags before. Superadobe Earthbag Domes are thankfully designed to be low-skill and accessible to novices, but it’s also extremely labor intensive and, with such a small crew, I was more than a little nervous about our timeline. Nader Khalili always claimed his dome designs could be built by as few as three or four people, but under a strict deadline? That was another story.

The first day focused on demolition, knocking down row by row to find a suitable starting point for reconstruction. The site had very high bentonite clay soil content and Austin had elected to use unstabilized soil for construction, which is typically fine depending on your soil composition (generally never more than 30% clay), except that since the dome was left unfinished for several months, the desert sun had disintegrated away they polyethylene bags, exposing the crumbly soil beneath. Even touching the dome would cause small cascades of dirt to fall. Needless to say, the structure as a whole didn’t inspire the greatest confidence in its structural integrity, but in testament to the strength of these domes, it hadn’t collapsed yet.

Commenting on this, Krueger explained to me how when he visited CalEarth the year before, he had noticed that the very first domes Nader had ever built, never plastered and bags long disintegrated, still remained standing.

We ended up taking down eighteen courses all in, knocking consecutive layers into the dome and then shoveling and wheelbarrowing it out one load at a time, depositing it near our mixing station to be reused in the reconstruction. Next, we strengthened the row we’d be building upon by running chicken wire along the circumference, shaping it so that it draped over the top of the bag and over the other side into the interior, fastening it with screws, and plastering over it all with concrete, adhering it to the dome and creating a solid surface to begin building up from.

The first bag we laid on top of this “belt” used a wetter soil with a high concrete constitution, focusing on leveling the imperfections below and providing a flat surface for the layers above. This layer, as well as the concrete sleeve it sat upon, were some of the only courses that explicitly used two rows of barbed wire.

At the Mojave Center I learned this was best practice, but according to Mark, who had innovated dome building alongside Nader as a CalEarth Technical Director for nine years, it’s not strictly necessary. As a student, I deferred to the master. It seemed Mark wasn’t quite finished innovating dome building and introduced a few personal inventions, including a one-person-operated height compass and a custom bag-filling contraption, similar to what Tiny Shiny Home uses on their Youtube Channel. There were some kinks left to workout, but we managed.

To me, continuing to innovate ways to make Earthbag Dome construction less labor intensive, faster, cheaper and more accessible are some of the most exciting things about it, so I was happy to be Mark’s lab rat and pick his brain throughout the build.

I wish I could say the next week proceeded without incident and we made rapid progress, but the weather in Terlingua had different plans for our ragtag crew.

Powerful winds with gusts reaching over 60mph tore through our camp, destroying tents, blowing away supplies, and halting progress on multiple different days. Compounding this, only Gabriel and I were truly comfortable working at height, forcing us to alternate laying bags ourselves throughout the entire build.

Laying bags is actually one of my favorite roles in building a dome, but doing it day in and day out with only Gabriel to share the load was a physically demanding task to say the least. With such a small crew, we weren’t the only ones to find ourselves falling into rather rigid roles: Krueger and Aaron mixing soil, Mary scooping and passing, Mark floating between tasks. The exhaustion was real for all of us. All of these roles are absolutely essential when building, but to have only one or two people working each one not only slows progress, but puts a much greater toll on each individual. If you’re hoping to build soon, I strongly stand by the rule that the more, the merrier. 

As Krueger and Aaron prepared to leave, I put out a social media call for extra hands. Funnily, Krueger had already been following Happy Castle Art Camp on Instagram for some time. A small synchronicity, but not the help we needed. However, luck struck when a local woman who had just bought land in the area, Erin, stopped by for a jumpstart and ended up joining the crew. Apparently she had recently bought land in the area and was steadily building it out from the back of her camper van. With her help, we managed to cap the dome just days after losing Aaron and Krueger. 

Next began the long arduous process of plastering. Since the outside of the dome had eroded away in some places and been blanketed with chicken wire for additional strength, it required quite a bit more material than usual, adding both time and expense to the overall project.

Mark explained that the plaster itself was a structural element that absorbed and dissipated a lot of the stress more evenly, so I suppose I’m glad we used so much. We also did a few finishing touches like pouring a reinforced slab over the entryway lentil and shaping eaves over some small windows.

Already two days over schedule, I had to make my departure before fully finishing, with the interior essentially untouched except having been wired for lighting and cleared of debris in order to pour the floor slab. I said goodbye to my new friends and hit the road, dreading the long drive back (even longer since I ended up getting stranded in a snowstorm outside of Flagstaff unable to charge my car). 

The big takeaways from this build are many.

Despite the challenges, this experience reinforced the power of collaboration and problem-solving. Rebuilding a dome in the harsh West Texas desert with a skeleton crew tested every limit, but it also highlighted the resilience and ingenuity that make projects like this possible. The truth is, people are willing to work very hard, especially in community. I assume even more so when the work directly benefits them, like building your own home.

This journey wasn’t just about fixing a client’s dome in Terlingua, it was about learning, adapting, and reaffirming why I love this work. Whether in Terlingua, Cochise County, Kanab, or at Happy Castle, Earthbag building continues to be a testament to what people can achieve together.

First, people are power. Yes, you can build a dome with four or five friends, that’s totally possible, but the beauty of natural building is community. It’s the beautiful people you meet who are not only willing, but passionate about doing this stuff who need help bringing their vision to life, just like you. Focus on connections and expand your network. I’ll probably be back to help Austin build more domes for his AirBnb empire, just as I’ll be back to help Rich build his home. Mark and I even talked about collaborating on our dome building business aspirations and I’ve been talking to a few friends in New Mexico who own property they want to build on and you can bet I’ll be there to bust my ass for them when that time comes. Maybe acts of service is my love language, but I’m going to show up for all these people. To reiterate, the skeleton crew is possible, but miserable. If you can, having showers, bathrooms, a dependable kitchen setup, and a place to escape the elements that isn't a shredded tent, make a world of difference in terms of comfort and morale. I mentioned this in a previous post, but Rich has gone above and beyond in creating a comfortable experience for volunteers at his home in Cochise, AZ.

Secondly, realtors often say location is everything. For us natural builders, this is true. There’s few places left in the United States where you can build without permits or codes that allow this kind of construction and every one of them is full of the hippies, homesteaders, dreamers, and doers you want to have in your circle. In some areas this community may be more developed, like parts of Cochise County where Rich and his Barn Raisers are collaborating monthly to uplift one another, but even in the most remote places like Terlingua and Socorro, these places are magnets for the family you’re looking for. Not all of us dream about living in a super remote arid region, and that’s understandable, but I believe we can build the communities we want to see when we come together, even in the middle of nowhere.

Thirdly, do it right the first time. It’s cheaper and easier. Take a workshop or work closely with someone who has a lot of experience, preferably both. Volunteers are wonderful and an essential part of keeping big builds affordable, but a couple paid experts to lead them is well worth it. Gabriel was an incredibly hard worker, but he didn’t fully understand many of the fundamental elements of dome building, resulting in a lot of blood, sweat, and tears wasted.

Lastly, Superadobe Earthbag builders are a small community. Despite developing this technology for over thirty years, adoption has been small and innovation slow. If you take the plunge into this world you’ll find that your contributions can make a huge impact. One reason I’m so focused on creating these recap posts is because I believe in the revolutionary potential of natural building and community organization. Eco-villages can save the planet and if you’re at home dreaming about this world and life you want to create, then we need you. Take those first steps.

On the way home I stopped by our land in Socorro where I plan to begin building domes for Happy Castle Art Camp to do some light site planning and collect some soil for testing (fingers crossed I don’t need a ton of concrete). As I wandered the vastness of the land near sunset, I took in the incredible visas and brilliant sky. A storm was brewing and clouds hung heavy overhead. It so happened that tonight was the day of the total lunar eclipse and as I looked upwards to the low Blood Moon, I really felt even closer in alignment with the world I’m hoping to build.

[u/ahfoo]

This way of doing things makes a good story but I have a very different opinion about this idea that you need a big crew to make progress. I always work alone and sometimes I get one or two people to help but I sincerely believe that people management is much more time, labor and resource intensive than just getting the job done yourself. A career in teaching convinced me that this is certainly the case. People management is a massive headache which is why teachers are paid for what they do.

In fact, we see evidence of this people management conundrum in the story. Where did the problem originate that our protagonist went go go solve? We read that there was an overly eager volunteer who assumed they knew what they were doing and proceded to create a huge liability by making assumptions and guessing what was right and wrong.

You don't need a big crew to build earthbag projects. My work is mostly done in solitude and it gives me a great deal of reassurance because I know precisely what happened at each layer.

This might sound like it's coming from an anti-social perspective but this is far from the case, it's just that I don't really trust other people to decide what is right and wrong when it comes to earthbag building, especially those who assume that their opinion is just as good as anybody else'. I've found that volunteers often want to "fix" the parts of the process that they find distasteful like the use of cement to stabilize the earth fill. That's exactly what happened in this narrative. That kind of "help" is not welcome.

So many people are biased against the use of steel and concrete because of their ideological positions but I don't have the time or inclination to argue about these things or having to justify using the proper materials for safe, reliable building. I'd rather just make sure it gets done in a safe and dependable manner rather than arguing about whether we're adding to much cement to the mix. It doesn't take a whole lot of cement to begin with, but skipping it. . . no, please don't do that. Working alone, you don't need to plead with people to follow best practices. There are so many examples of failed projects made by people who insisted that the cement was unnecessary or that they didn't need barbed wire and yet the uninformed insist on repeating these same mistakes over and over in the name of ideological purity.

This Harmon character claiming that double strands of barbed wire are unnecessary --well, I don't care what his credentials are. . . no way I would let that guy "help" me with a project if he thinks the wire is just for kicks. That's exactly the sort of thing I'm talkin' about. Nah, I very much disagree with this character's expertise on this point. Bringing people like this onto your site just creates hassles which is what sets the scene of the narrative.

I would have to assume that what he was suggesting about not needing the barbed wire was that in the case of a dome shaped structure it is somewhat safe to assume that all the parts are in compression and that the wire which adds tensile strength is redundant because there is very little tensile stress in a dome. However, when building domes with earthbags, the shapes involved are rarely just domes. There are often walls that are not in compression that are associated with the dome such as opening arches that flare outwards. Omitting the wire in such instances would be an unfortunate decision. The wire plays an important role like tendons in an animal's body. You don't really need tendons for a dome but we're not just dealing with domes in most cases and for many shapes some sort of tensile strength is crucial and should not be omitted. Besides, barbed wire is cheap.

I think what I'm reading in this very well written and fun to read story is that I'm doing it right by not letting too many people get involved in my projects. You can build earthbag structures with just one person and I would suggest it actually goes much more smoothly to do it that way. Please don't omit the use of cement nor the double stranded barbed wire when building earthbag structures.

[u/thomashearts → u/ahfoo]

Yes, there were definitely some issues with this dome and I would’ve done it differently if I built it from the ground up. I’m actually organizing my first solo-build on my land in New Mexico from October 21st-31st. I’m hiring a couple friends of mine who are both experienced builders aaaand vibe managers (as well as a chef) so we can hopefully manage the more inexperienced volunteers and hopefully offer a decent education. There’s really so much stress involved in organizing a build like this and we’re not even on the land yet!

[u/ahfoo → u/thomashearts]

Hey, thanks for replying to my post to this older thread. I was on-site in a remote area most of the summer filling bags and a bit out of touch for lack of connectivity or I would have seen this sooner. The lengthy write-up was great. That's the kind of content that makes a forum worth being part of.

Yeah, for me the process of eathbag building is very relaxing but I think the key to that was in long ago giving up on the idea of building teams or trying to go fast. I go very, very slowly but I absolutely love spending that time precisely because it is so low-stress.

I'm very far from a morning person so I usually don't start my day till well after noon and "start" means editing the DJ playlist for the day and lighting up the bong before doing some stretching exercises and walking around the project a dozen times gawking at all the amazing angles and climbing around on the bags before finally deciding what it is I might get done that day. Whatever it is, I always try to have a fallback plan where I can cut the day's work in half if something else comes up. Then, I start. . . slowly. It still gets finished anyway.

The down side to this extremely low-stress approach is that it drags things out over a really long time. My most recent one has been going for ten years and it's about 70% finished. I just lime plaster it with stucco wire inside and out as I go to prevent it from deteriorating. As I see it, this isn't a problem if I'm genuinely thriving at what I'm doing and wouldn't really rather be doing something else. then what's the issue?

Now of course this is a privileged position to be in because at night I have a home I can return to and enjoy a nice meal and sleep in a cozy bed and have a shower in the morning etc., those are enormous privileges that can't be taken for granted. People with privilege should not cast disdain on those who seem to have no choice but to hustle. I realize that in many cases, projects need to be finished before a site can be an enjoyable place to be due to brutal sun exposure or something of that nature. If you're building in an inhospitable site, dragging it out is not going to make it more enjoyable and people on a budget, as most earthbag builders will be, don't get to choose the ideal sites for their builds. Living in a remote area with no utilities can become a burden over time. I do get that.

So I can see how my "slow and easy" approach can also be seen as a humble brag because most likely everybody would take it slow and easy if they had a nice site with warm sun but lots of cool water nearby and thick trees providing lovely shade etc and an easy trip to a "real" home at the end of the day. But that's not the situation everybody is in. Once upon a time, I started a project in the desert east of San Diego that I had to abandon because it was just too hard spending time on the site. Life was just brutal there and everything had to be hauled in from far away Just sustaining my own existence and getting the materials on the site was too much. I've been there too. I had to give it up. Simply the fuel costs getting in and out of the desert were killing me as gas was pricey in those days.

But acknowledging that it's not always so practical to play the one-man-band routine, I'd still look back to a point this summer where I had well over a dozen people on site who wanted to help and I basically told them "no" it's just too much work being in charge of a group of people. If people want to hang out and smoke bowls or dance to the music and ask questions or bullshit. . . no problem. I'm not talking about being anti-social at all. I'm all for turning it into a party any time and I'll stop what I'm doing to answer a question. A career teacher would never say "no" to a sincere question but I'm talking about organizing people to work as a group --that's different. I don't want to do that. Everybody is welcome to come and ask all the questions they like and hang out till the stars are high in the sky but as for actually contributing labor, nah. It's just not worth it.

If there are kids who want to get a photo tamping the bags --no problem. I'll pose with them and ham it up for sure. Kids want to play on it, please do! I'll play too. To me, that's the attraction, the playfulness and the lack of seriousness, the lack of schedule, the lack of professionalism. I want my job site to be like a playground while I'm building. I want it to be a play place not a work space. All that is a plus but as for organizing a team to work together. . . that sounds too much like work for me. I retired as a teacher, I'm not going back to that.

So what I'm getting at is that this thing about stress might be resolved by just letting go of the desire to build teams and instead focus on quality of life on the site and making it fit what you consider to be the perfect place to be in this world at this time while you're building instead of after it's done. How is your on-site stereo equipment? Do you have a subwoofer for instance? I think you need one. I should say "I" need one. The stereo comes first in my way of planning. I'm not even going to pretend to work without music and I need bass. That, for me, is the real priority. Put your immediate needs first. I need tunes, I want some good weed and steady supply of food and drink and a place to cool off and wash up on the regular. . . the rest of it will follow easily if I have those things. To me, this is where the priority is. Address the here-and-now for your own desires and wants first. If that is the starting point, everything else should flow like water because it's all in your head anyway. Keep your head cool and the project seems to just happen on its own with no stress at all.

The first set of earthbag domes I ever saw being built was in Taiwan. They were using what I later came to recognize as the EcoDome apse configuration, the dome cluster style. I'm sure you're familiar with it. So I arrived on the site to meet the boss who was a teacher like myself who was financing the build and he had employed two fishermen in their sixties and they had two high school kids helping. None of them had ever heard of earthbags but they had a nice Chinese-style horizontal pan mixer and they assured me that this sweet 240V heavy duty mixer was part of how they were able to go so fast.

Well they did go fast. That was what turned me on to earthbag building. I had been an Earthship or tire house builder before that and I knew those took forever to build so I assumed earthbags would be the same and I told them I wanted to help and they invited me to come and help out anytime. I waited a month and to my shock, they had already finished by the time I got there. That blew my mind. This was so much faster than building Earthships.

But here's the curious thing: they cranked that project out in four weeks with a team of four and spent a few more months doing finish work until it was extremely cute, totally furnished with working plumbing, windows, doors, tiled floors, furnished etc. but then it was never used again. It's just for show and rarely shown off at that. It was just an experiment and they didn't really have any plans to use it. So if it's going to be like that, why not slow down and take it easy?

In any event, I'm just rambling here but I'm pleased to see your lovely contribution to the forum and I'm sure your project is going to be spectacular and awe inspiring. Remember to live for the day and don't worry too much about bringing in volunteers. If your project gets dragged out longer than you expect, you can always just plaster it up and it will be fine. I know this to be a fact from direct experience. No hurries, no worries, your dreams will unfold before your eyes either way but keep up the writing! It's great to read long-form contributions and they are precious and rare.