I want to build an Earthship!
 

In case you don't know, an Earthship is a kind of off-the-grid home combining passive solar, thermal mass construction (rammed earth in tires), water collection and grey water processing, etc. They've been around for about 40 years and many of them have been built, so they have been refined quite a bit. They have engineered plans you can buy, and in New Mexico, they're even written into the building code (a big plus when you are trying to get permits, etc.).

They cost about the same as a conventional home to build (but I'd build a small one), but the big savings come afterwards. Utilities run about $100 a YEAR I'm told. Grow your own food, generate your own electricity, receive water from the sky. Plus, the hippie/hobbit home style really appeals to me.

So, I have about six years to accomplish this (when Medicaid kicks in and I can kick my 9-5). First up: save money for lot, and research!

And ... I'm going to pay someone to ram those tires full. (and I'll put a yurt on there first. Or a RV. or something!)

Main earthship architect:

http://earthship.org/

Flickr pictures of Earthships:

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=earthship&s=int

y'all think I'm crazy, doncha?

No, I'm with you.

Of course you are, but the building methods have proven sound and workable. It will require a change in lifestyle, however.
Passive solar, and thermal mass, mitigate extreme swings in temperature, but it still swings, unlike the thermostat on the wall system. So you'll need a stove/fireplace to take care of one end, and you won't have AC on the other. Rainwater and greywater systems have to be monitored and maintained. Even more so for photovoltic/wind electrical systems. Especially when the grandchildren visit.
It's definitely doable, but it takes dedication and work.

Only if god told you to build one.


I think I just blasphemed. :(

Now I'm going to hell and you'll be living in a cool house when Armageddon hits. Some people just get all the perks. :)

I'm teasing. lol Just in case I am misunderstood not that that happens much.:P

The site has links to existing Earthships you can rent by the night. I highly recommend you take a little "vacation" in one (preferably in the height of El Paso summer) and see what it's really like.

oh, I'm planning to. Those ones for rent are all in Taos, and I've never made it quite that far, so I think that's a good goal for the summer.

Yeah, lots of adjustments to be made. But I really think it could work for me.

We'll see--you guys know I'm all talk. But independence and nonconformity are important to me, and I think it would be a great idea for my senior years. Wouldn't it be cool to leave one of my grandchildren an earthship--all paid for, low living expenses? A nice legacy, I think.

Depends on if your grandkids want it. My grandmother left us a house that was all paid for, and low living expenses... of course it was dilapidated, in a neighborhood that had gone from nice to ghetto in the last 50 years, and mostly unsellable. Saddled my mom and her siblings with the property taxes, is more like it.

I'm not trying to be a huge downer, I actually think it's a cool idea. I especially like the glass bottles inset into the walls and the year-round greenhouse gardening. I'm just saying, live your life for you, not for what you think your grandkids might or might not want out of you.

oh, I agree--just woolgathering, trying to counter some common arguments (in my head, if nowhere else).

There are a lot of alternative building techniques and materials out there. I'd have to do some serious research and networking before then.

It sort of amazes me we don't have more of this stuff in my area. Too poor and uneducated, I guess. But we have colonias where there are no facilities, and lots of people squatting on them with less serviceable houses. We have an adobe yard and quarries nearby. And we have sun, of course.

You don't have to go whole hog hippie. No reason you can't build that kind of home, with electric service and plumbing to keep a comfortable lifestyle, and still have a paid for abode with low utilities.

There's a pretty great documentary on Michael Reynolds: Garbage Warrior -- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104694/

Touches on some of the pros and cons of earlier designs. The second half is really depressing.

Two side points, based on a peripheral knowledge of my friend's experience:

- Get all the same size tire, or only one or two sizes if your plans specifically incorporate different wall thicknesses. It'll save a lot of fiddling later, and since you're probably the only person in your county who wants used tires in that volume, it's definitely a buyer's market.

- Don't build on shale. it makes it a whole hell of a lot harder to ram the tires than if you excavate into, say, actual dirt.

If you're serious about it, tho, look at both sides of the spectrum. The Living Building Challenge is less maverick-ey, but equally legit. This is a pretty nice intro article, or you could go straight to the source.

Thanks for the links; I'll definitely check it out. There's a ton of stuff out there, including Michael Reynolds' several books.

Why is the second half of the documentary depressing?

And yeah, I already picked up on the same size tire thing. But I would be years away from doing this, so I'm not going to start stockpiling tires just yet.

there are a lot of ways to make a home "greener" if that's what one wants, and some lovely "hybrid" homes are being built. Advantages to earthship proper, would be cost and ease of permitting, since it's a known item.

and I really don't have to travel far (if at all) to be whole hog hippie, anyway.

I wanna be a bus
I wanna be a big bus
I wanna bus the world around
I wanna be the biggest bus that ever bused the world around.

It stops being all optimistic-dreamy-paradise-in-the-desert and gets into how he was basically stopped in his tracks by a bunch of lawsuits from former tenets / owners who had had ridiculous problems with their homes.

One example that sticks in the mind is that a guy's livingroom was so hot one summer that his typewriter melted.

Mostly it's litigious-depressing, though, not failure-depressing.