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and solar panels, which is used for lighting at night, TV’s, computers, etc, (none for heating or cooling).
3) Earthships collect and store their own water. (8.5” annual precipitation is sufficient.)
4) Earthships re-use water and treat “waste water”. In an earthship all water for human contact is filtered rain or snow melt. “Gray water” is filtered thru botanical cells, providing nourishment for lush indoor gardens, with a by-product of cleaned clear “gray water” which is then used for flushing toilets. “Black water” leaves the earthships to go to an outdoor botanical cell, where it is broken down to base nutrients.
5) All earthships grow food indoors. Year round it is common to be able to pick bananas, grapes, tomatoes and herbs in an earthship, even when it is 10 below zero outside or in a dry summer desert. They are experimenting with a larger earthship to see if it can sustain the food requirements of a family of four by adding more garden room
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and a tilapia pond inside as well as a little ‘chicken ship’ outside.
6) Earthships are designed so they can be made in any climate, anywhere in the world, primarily from discarded by-products of “civilization”, and built by mostly unskilled labor using only hand tools. While this has often been proved true, the reality is that power tools and equipment are often employed in construction and often earthships are tied to “the grid” when constructed to appease local code enforcers who are bound by the laws and covenants of their jurisdictions.
It was fascinating to see these earthships built in all climates and terrains, in subdivisions and in a wide variety of styles and scales. They ranged in size from the 600sf ‘nests’ to the 12,000sf ‘earth-yachts’. Most of the images showed earthships having an organic form with a lot of stucco and stained glass-like appearance; others looked much more like ‘traditional’ homes.
The most amazing consideration for me was that this is a truly carbon-free style of home. Imagine if society could have a ‘do-over’ and we reduced our ‘carbon-footprint by 40% or more, had safer, stronger, healthier homes and never had to pay a home utility bill. Imagine if we also had ‘clean’ transportation vehicles. Imagine for a minute what we can do as we retrofit or add to our developing communities. Imagine for just a moment, the influence we can have, if we take action. If we can’t use the by-product, we shouldn’t use the product. Anybody want to pound tires?
For additional information see www.earthship.com. |
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Earthships by David Kirwin
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Last month Michael Reynolds’s son Jonah, spoke at the library about “EarthShips”. It was fascinating, amazing, and educational. We learned what an earthship is, how the systems work, how they are made, and a bit of the history of this amazing “phenomena.” An earthship by Reynolds’s definition must have several qualities.
1) Heating and cooling systems - Primarily with “thermal mass”, secondarily with “passive solar” for heat and the nearly universal 58 degree temperature of the earth below the “frost line” for cooling. An earthship maintains a constant comfortable indoor environment without any need of utilities. The basic building blocks for the thermal mass of earthships is ‘rammed earth tires’ – discarded auto tires filled with dirt compacted with sledge hammers. While it sounds wacky at first blush, it is a triumph of environmental sanity.
2) An earthship collects its own electricity from wind turbines
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Walls of an “earthship” under construction showing recycled tires |
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CASA |
