Earthship Construction. Our Earthship Experience: So, what exactly is this thing? Christened an "Earthship" by designer/architect Michael Reynolds, literally hundreds of these homes (made primarily from old automobile tires and beer cans) have been constructed in the Southwestern U. S. This project is the first Earthship constructed within the state of Ohio.
Earthship_ How to Build Your Own, Vol. 1 - Michael Reynolds (1990). How to build an earthship. How to build an earthship. Upload Sign in Join. THE VERTICALFACE EARTHSHIP PLAN OPTION BOOK. or build your Earthship for you. VG Plan Option Booklet.PDF. Earthship How to Build Your Own Vol 1 PDF. Doplňkové informace ke stavbě zemělodi / Additional information for building the Earthship.
The concept is pretty cool - taking advantage of the natural heating and cooling properties of the earth, the passive heat of the sun, discarded and problem waste materials and mixing these with an embracing attitude toward your environment - the result is a comfortable and peaceful place to live. If you want to find more background on the concept (and a whole lot more), check out the source at www. Our Experience. After attending a workshop put on by Solar Survival, reading all the books, and purchasing a set of generic blueprints.. We decided to give this thing a try, taking our vast background in construction (in other words.. It became our summer project for a number of years. Progress was interrupted by work and a few years in Europe, but we returned in the autumn of 2. This was the beginnings of Blue Rock Station. Back sometime in the early 9.
Earthship tours, PV certification workshops, solar. but we returned in the autumn of 2004 prepared to finish this project and build a sustainability center in the. With this logical goal in mind he set out to design and refine the Earthship. how to build a city for themselves while at the same. Our earthship's 650 watt power system cost $4,500 and has never gone out. As Sharon is typing this article on the computer for me (I'm still a pen and paper person), a. Earthship Books. Learn about Earthship Biotecture! 575-613-4409 or 1-800-841-9249; My Account. Register. Earthship Coffee Table Book: Part I Hardcover.
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Annie was listening to our local radio station in Tampa (a great little community radio station called WMNF) to an interview with Michael Reynolds describing an interesting house he had designed for actor Dennis Weaver. She looked into it a bit, then suggested we consider building one on some property we owned in Ohio. Foolishly I nodded my head and soon found myself in Taos, New Mexico - out in the middle of the desert pounding dirt into old tires. So just how do you go about building an earthship like this? There are a lot of great web sites out there that do a terrific job in describing the process. There are also a number of books available that are quite helpful if you want to go further, but since you are here - we put together a fairly basic overview to give you a taste: Pounding the tires.. We all know the problem.. Nobody pretends that Earthships are the sole answer, but they are a great way to put thousands of these eyesores to good use. We used about 1,4. Earthship. The tire itself is little more than a mold to hold rammed earth in place. It generally takes about two wheel barrow loads of earth to fill each tire. Simply take the stuff that has been excavated from your site, shovel it into the tire and spend the rest of the summer swinging a sledge hammer. Many people ask if there is any regulatory issue (or code issue) in using the discarded tires. I suspect it varies greatly from place to place - but here in Ohio at the time we were building, we were required to contact the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) since we were going to use more than 1.
The folks there were great to work with and actually provided us with the tires from an illegal dump site. They visited several times to make sure we were storing the tires properly (avoid mosquitoes) and even helped pound a few. Someone was kind enough to share the current regulations, so we will share them here with you. Beneficial Use of Tires (from the Ohio EPA, GD #6. After a couple of tires, you will find you develop your own style. Most people end up pulling the inside rim of the tire up with their hands and shoving the loose dirt into the tire. Then you begin pounding with the sledge. Once filled to the brim, level the tire to itself and in respect to the tires around it. If you do this right, the entire wall should end up standing straight and tall.
The good folks at Solar Survival don't seem to suffer from some of the same difficulties we encountered during this phase of the project. We were told that they often have so many volunteers showing up on site, that they interview them and only accept those that show promise. We, on the other hand, placed ad after ad in the local newspaper trying to get anyone who could swing a sledgehammer to come out and work - and we even would pay them, with Catlyn supervising. Admittedly pounding tires is really hard work, but we still managed to go through about 6. Some lasted less than a day. Surprisingly we found the people who lasted longest and did the best work were middle- aged men and young women. I don't know what that says about anything.. I thought I would throw it in for all to ponder.
Laying the Foundation.. After selecting the suitable site, you clear your patch of heaven and lay out a rough image of the Earthship's footprint. All that dirt and clay and rock that is being scraped away is what you will use to fill those hundreds of tires.
The house "floats" on this foundation - which typically causes traditional builders to cringe (they want to build deep footers). I am perfectly happy to buck conventional construction wisdom (as I know no better). Fortunately we did not have to put this theory to the test as we were resting on bedrock after scraping off the topsoil. One thing that the experts (Earthship experts that is) recommend is that you pile your earth right in the middle of where you will be working. This is good advice, saving miles of pushing a wheelbarrow around before your project is finished. Of course you need to be very careful in placing your first layer of tires, as everything keys off these. Measure and check and double check and measure again. Then you just keep building up the courses, ensuring they are level and solid. It is also a good idea to level them vertically as you go, avoiding future work when it comes to mudding.
The Earthship's roof.. Perhaps one of the trickiest challenges we faced in this construction project was to build a roof that didn't leak. Since Earthships were born out in the desert southwest, I suspect the folks out there didn't give it much thought. But here in wet southeastern Ohio, it is a major concern. The unique "V- shaped" design of the roof is especially vulnerable. So take great care. Once you have finished pounding tires, you must then build a sill plate that binds the top row of tires together. How you do this is outlined in the Solar Survival books (and you thought you were going to learn everything you needed to know from this site, eh?) The composite "I- beams" span the gap created by the "U- shaped" tire walls. Some folks will use felled trees as rafters - which gives a very rustic appearance. Just remember the span is quite wide and the beam needs to support a great deal of weight. In the center of that trough, you must build a "cricket" that sheds the water off in both directions. Our design (the basic plan from Solar Survival) has two cisterns that catch the water from the roof, one on each side of the main structure. In each of the three rooms, we have placed a skylight. These are essential (in our view) as they provide a tremendous amount of light. But they are also a pain - being the weak point where most of your leaking will occur. Be prepared to do plenty of flashing around them. We also coated the entire roof with a Neoprene rolled surface, then covered this with salvaged slate (reclaimed from those old barns we tore down). And of course, insulate your roof well. We used rolled insulation in the face and blown- in insulation in the main rooms. The Earthship is remarkably snug. We have found that even in temperatures of - 1.
F the house stays at 5. F or more, even without a heat source. When we light the wood stove, the entire house is soon 7.
F. Building the face.. The face of the structure (or greenhouse area) is the passive solar heart source of this building. In order to gather in the maximum amount of sunshine, the entire structure must be oriented to south- south east (assuming you're in the northern hemisphere). The face is also angled based on your latitude, so that on the winter solstice it is at a 9. N we positioned it at a 5. N you would position it at a 5.
When we got ready to do this phase of the project, it seemed a bit overwhelming. So we tried to get some "professional" help - but were soon put off by the price. Eventually we were able to do the job for about 1/1. As you can see, we even managed to get it to look somewhat like the diagram. Actually, the construction of the face is fairly straightforward. You build a wooden frame onto a foundation of pounded tires, setting it at the proper angle and securing it to the main structure roof with really heavy- duty rafters. The wood we used was mostly salvaged from local barns that we dismantled (arranging with the farmer to salvage the wood before he burned them down). There are some fairly complicated methods for constructing the large windows.. We purchased a number of patio doors from a warehouse (these were returns and seconds). In this way we avoided a lot of problems with leaking that we read about on various web sites. We had the windows delivered before we began framing the face. I have read of problems some people have had matching custom windows with the openings, but we avoided this by having each window right there on site and checking and double- checking before hammering in that final nail. After securing the patio door panels in the various slots, we constructed three "dormers" where we could place traditional windows that open. This is simply a matter of taste and we have seen a number of Earthships that skip this step entirely. By doing this, you lose a bit of sunlight, but we placed them in the bathroom and the utility room - so good ventilation was more important to us than passive solar heat in these locations.