Building a house of sand

“Don’t build your house on the sandy land…” goes the old Sunday School song.
“I’ll huff, and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down,” warns the Big Bad Wolf in the Three Little Pigs.
The general consensus seems to be that building anything with sand is a bad idea – not so, if Umhlanga builder Andy Strydom has anything to do with it.
Strydom builds homes out of sandbags, the most recent of which is in the upmarket Mtunzini River Estate on the North Coast.
“In 2008 I was taken to a horse barn in Cape Town that was built out of sandbags. On that day the outside temperature was 38°C but inside it felt 10°C cooler.”
He spent the next three years learning how to build with sandbags and introduced it to KZN in 2011.
“A sandbag building looks and feels no different to a plastered brick structure. The difference lies within the structure itself. The sandbags are packed into the building’s frame, weighing 8,5kg each.”
Strydom said the benefits include a cooler interior, eradication of mould and damp as the sandbags are waterproof, and increased acoustic value as the sandbags act as soundproofing.
It is also eco-friendly and the reduced need for air-conditioning and heaters can cut a utility bill by up to 70 percent.
The sand house costs significantly less than conventional building: R3 500 per square metre compared to R8 000 per square metre, which Strydom joked loses him business.
“We build in half the time and people think our cheap rates mean we do shoddy work. Contrary to what most believe you can drill a hole in the wall and hang anything off it. If anything, a sandbag house is stronger because the bags make it four times heavier than a normal structure.”
Strydom is shortly due to start his next sandbag project, a three-bedroomed 200m² house in Palm Lakes Estate.