Earthships

The Greater Earthship Community is a movement led by architect Michael Reynolds starting in the 70’s, based on the premise that  basic human needs should not be subject to economic fluctuations.  His solution involved building affordable housing, coined ‘earthships’ after the self-reliant qualities of sailing ships.  They use similar principles to the way native Puebloans had been living in the four corners region for 2000 years -- a large thermal mass to maintain comfortable temperatures, orientation to sun for heating and plant growth, and internally interdependent networks for energy, water, temperature, and plants.

The Greater Earthship Community consists of 60 or so earthships in a development outside of Taos with space for a hundred more.  There are several satellite communities in the New Mexico area, and thousands more individual earthships across the US and many overseas in a variety of environments ranging from 14000 ft in Bolivia to the Yukon to the tropics.

Earthsip Biotecture is the architectural and fabrication business associated with the Greater Earthship Community.  Most recently they have worked on designing structures for Haiti and Indonesia post-natural disaster to provide affordable shelter and clean water.  The earthships are completely self-sustaining.  There are no power, water, or sewage lines running to or from the structures, although some owners choose to have conventional utilities as a back-up system both to comply with local building codes or for re-sale value.

Building techniques are straightforward but physically strenuous, and many of the materials used are recycled and widely available.  The basic building consists of a large south facing greenhouse for heat and light and north facing compacted earth wall to store heat that warms the inside in the winter and cools it in the summer.  Electricity is provided by solar panels mounted to the south-facing attached greenhouse.  We spent a week in an earthship and although the temperatures outside ranged form 40 to 90, it didn’t vary from 70 to 75 inside, without any sort of air conditioning or heater.

Water is collected from the metal roof surface into a set of cisterns, and is used 4 times before it is ultimately channeled to an outside garden.  After being collected in the cisterns is it filtered for contaminants and used as drinking and washing water in the faucets and sinks.  Then, it is considered ‘grey water’ and is sent through several long planters in the greenhouse and inside windows of the structure. After the greywater is filtered through the drit, gravel, and root systems in the planters it is collected for use in the toilets, and then pumped outside to a conventional septic tank that feeds into an outdoor greenspace.  Ultimately, the result is that 1 gallon of water used in the earthship does the work of 4 gallons in a conventional home.  The Greater Earthship Community development gets only 7-9in of precipitation a year, yet this is enough for a 2 br, 1 bath home.

The home we stayed in had a 9-ft banana tree in the living room which was sustained entirely by the greywater system.  In another earthship there were fish, grape vines, and tropical birds living inside.  Outside, it is a sagebrush desert that reaches 120 deg F in the summer, yet this ecosystem had been thriving for years.

We took showers, ran blenders, watched TV, and turned on lights as we normally would, yet didn’t want for electricity, water, coolness or heat.  In fact, we only ran into problems when we didn’t use enough water in the sinks to provide greywater for the planters and had to occasionally water the greenhouse plants by hand.

It appears the biggest hindrance to future earthship construction is navigating the building codes of various counties across the US, which were written assuming conventional construction techniques and materials.

http://earthship.com/

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