For most of my life I have lived in a stick build house; that is a house made with wood framing. However, given the Caribbean climate (hurricanes), and termites, wood framing is not necessarily the best choice.

Wood Framing

Despite these concerns, in an effort to protect our solar equipment (batteries and power inverter),we built a small wood framed shed. This method was chosen because it was fast and we are not sure if we want a shed there long term. It was most important for us to have something that could protect the solar equipment in the short term. We also use this shed to hold our refrigerator. The one that came with the camper was small and didn't have a usable freezer. This shed also gave us practice in constructing a hip roof, so more skill building was another advantage. We have been using this shed for almost a year and it has been working perfectly for us!

Wood shed under construction.

Earth Bags

When we first bought the land we were thinking of building with earth bags. This is a hyper adobe method of building that ideally takes advantage of dirt on site. We have learned in our time here that might not be the best option for us. We are just above bedrock and can't dig down far enough to get the dirt we need. Additionally, hyper adobe structures are generally built with dirt that is more clay like. Our soil is a bit too sandy and so we would need to augment the bag fill with concrete. Another feature of earth bag building that is generally considered an advantage, is the amount of thermal mass the walls provide. In climates like Arizona, where the days can be very warm and the evenings cooler, this makes a lot of sense. The air is dryer and the thermal mass can help keep the house cool during the day and warm at night. However, in a humid climate like ours, the thermal mass can actually work against you.

We did experiment with building with earth bags shortly after we got here. we built a little wall around the camper to put weight on tie downs and keep wind from getting up under the camper. It's our hope that this will prevent it from flipping or falling over if we get a hurricane. We didn't have enough dirt on site and so we brought in fill and augmented it with concrete. Earth bags can breakdown easily in the sun, so we covered the wall with stucco and painted it.

Earth bag wall around the camper.

Rock

Next we considered building with rock. We have a lot of rock here on site and so we could in theory use the rock as fill between the framing. We still really like this idea, but at the moment we are struggling to get plans approved, and while the sugar mills on island were built this way it does not appear to be a standard building method today. So this idea may work at some point in the future but not right now.

Example of a stone house built on the island. This picture was taken at the botanical garden.

Shipping Containers

Shipping containers has also been a consideration. Given that we are on an island that appears to have an abundance of shipping containers we thought we might be able to get a couple for a reasonable price. Unfortunately, the cost is much higher than we would have thought and we have concerns with getting a 40 foot container up the hill to our building site. We were successful with the 20 foot container that we are currently using for storage, however, the road makes it difficult to get larger containers up the hill.

This is why we are now leaning more toward CMU or concrete masonry units. I would say the majority of homes being built now are using this material, and so it should make it easier to get plans through the building department. Additionally, this is a material that is easier to come by, something we always need to consider here.

We are not masons

We wanted to get some experience building with this material prior to getting approval on the house build, so we decided to build a shed. At this time we are almost done with the shed walls and I think we have learned quite a bit. I cannot say that we have mastered this craft by any means, and the end product won't be perfect but I think it's a good start and it will serve the functional purpose of storing our stuff.

Our CMU shed under construction.