Rice-hull bagwall construction
Rice-hull bagwall construction is a system of building, with results aesthetically similar to the use of earthbag or cob construction, in which woven polypropylene bags (or tubes) are tightly filled with raw rice-hulls, and these are stacked up, layer upon layer, with strands of four-pronged barbed wire between, within a surrounding "cage" composed of mats of welded or woven steel mesh (remesh or "poultry wire") on both sides (wired together between bag layers with, for example, rebar tie-wire) and then stuccoed, to form building walls. Advantages (compared to earth-bag or cob) include less weight to handle/process, far better insulation values (around 3 - 4 per inch), use of an agricultural-waste product and the sequestration of CO2. This building approach was originally innovated and tested by Don Stephens, in the northwestern U.S. in 2005.[1]