Are Earthship Homes The Future Of Sustainable Housing? | Homemade | Abode

foreign people basically to me it's like a dragon coming down from the sky and breathing fire on people this is the story of a revolutionary idea that converts waste into original and Innovative homes from a small town in New Mexico Taos is for rugged individualism it's Where the wild west still lives Springs a tale of one man's radical Vision driven by perseverance and Obsession to transform not only a community but the whole world planet is demanding that we change uh or we will be not here anymore thank you Taos is uh it's in Northern New Mexico it's a little dot on the mouth about that big you know you gotta really look for it but once you find it hey here we are Talus is less than 50 miles or 80 kilometers from the New Mexico and Colorado State Line the small town sits on the edge of Taos Canyon surrounded by magnificent scenery there's enough variety of local color and Landscape to inspire any imagination so it's no wonder many of the town's 6 000 residents are artists this is a mecca for for artistic expression in all forms home to artists and creative people Thomas inspires artists because of the the magic of the mountain the color of the sky we are at a very high dry altitude and it creates a very unique sensation not the light uh it's some kind of glow that towels has it's absolutely gorgeous it's not boring I can't stand to be bored and you will not be bored in Taos rafting is big in the summer skiing is big in the winter you could go to the galleries here you can go to they've got great restaurants it's it's different here than anywhere else in the United States I call it it's the only place you can live in America that's sort of a third world country or a different country uh because when you cross that state line into New Mexico where you're not in Kansas anymore as you say from The Wizard of Oz you're not in Kansas anymore and there is no yellow brick road but a few kilometers Drive West of the Rio Grande Gorge there's a unique housing subdivision that is out of this world foreign [Music] welcome to the land of earthships it's an extraordinary Housing Development incorporating not only the latest trends and sustainable living but going far beyond the limits of what we think of as possible the concept of earthships is using and working and living with Mother Nature earthships meet all their owners needs but the main one is self-sufficiency these particular earthships are located in the desert away from water sewage and gas lines and electrical grids they're gorgeous first things first they have organic forms they're sinuous they're sensual well I think the architecture style is so unique it's almost like Fantasyland or Hobbit land you know uh you'll never see architecture like that anywhere I think think that's an interesting thing this one piece will make 52 layers watch on mobile devices or the big screen all for free no subscription required earthships are built primarily from scrap powered by renewable wind and solar energy and other natural resources this is really an interesting way to live and they have no electric bills they have no gas bills and that the water comes from the sky into tanks that they can turn on and use to heat their home and recycle they get plenty of solar gain and electricity the buildings temperatures are 68 to 72 degrees Fahrenheit year round and you can also grow year round as well [Music] in recent years there's been worldwide interest in building self-sustaining homes this first American subdivision designed and constructed by Earthship biotecture in Taos New Mexico consists of 74 units no two are alike each is as unique as the man who conceived them my name is Michael Reynolds I am the uh creator of the Earthship content we don't call them houses we call them our ships because house has preconceived ideas about it it's a little box with a little roof that has power companies and gas lines and sewage lines and water lines going in and out of it I studied in architecture got a degree in architecture from the University of Cincinnati what did I like about it nothing I studied architecture for six years got a degree and in that process of doing that I realized that architecture wasn't really stepping up to the needs and the and the problems on the planet and with the people at this time and I saw that I didn't want to be a regular architect Architects are taught to sort of make little monuments to themselves and they don't really care much about people or the planet and so I wanted to develop a way of providing buildings for people that respected the the phenomena of the planet and the phenomena of people and I had to develop a whole new profession and I called it biotexture biotexture is responding to the Natural phenomena of the planet to provide sustenance for people and that's not necessarily ecology it's not necessarily green it's not necessarily sustainable it's logical uh it's every man and woman and child's god-given right to have sustenance and it shouldn't be subject to economy you shouldn't have to make money in order to live you should make money in order to play [Music] rural Indiana in the 1950s seems an unlikely place for our future Rebel dreamer and pioneering architect to grow up and draw inspiration but it's here that young Michael Reynolds received his first lessons in how to live in harmony with the planet probably my childhood was pretty normal we were poor my dad was a milkman they were so poor that we had to use everything my dad used to save all kinds of jars and bottles and things I would guess you would call it rough in terms of not having much money but to me that was good because it made me uh resourceful and it made me strong I was the middle child so they didn't have much time for me and that was an influence in other words the fact that I had to do things for myself caused me to have the strength to move in this direction [Music] Michael believes that his simple upbringing makes him the man that he is today resourceful independent and free-spirited but he is also stubborn and says that he's never let any person or authority tell him how to think or how to live his life I came to New Mexico in 69 I was just graduating from architectural school and I was going to get drafted for the Vietnam War and I knew I had learned to race Motocross bikes and I came out here to race Motocross bikes with the idea of getting injured so I wouldn't have to go to Vietnam Michael turns away from The Establishment to embrace the laws of nature and the environmental movement that was emerging at this time the thing that was going on in the early 70s was the first real energy scare about oil shortage and so on the old steel beer cans were being thrown all over the streets and highways as garbage and they were saying we were going to have a garbage problem in the future [Music] and we were going to have very expensive wood very expensive housing and possibly even an oxygen problem from cutting down all the trees those two things made me say well we want trees why do we cut them down and build with them when we have these things that we throw away let's see if we can make these things that we throw away as valuable as trees in terms of building thank you [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] the first material was cans because of the abundance of them being thrown around but then that opened my mind to bottles plastic bottles and tires and I started pouring Earth into them as mud and then pushing Earth into them dry and then beating it in and then really ramming it in with Sledge hammers it was a whole Evolution but it turns out that it makes a very massive wall that stores energy is great in compression like the weight of the roof and is so wide that it is wider than its foundation so it has all kinds of engineering and structural and thermal qualities they're pretty much indestructible termites don't eat rubber rubber doesn't rot they are indigenous to the entire planet there are more tires being produced than there are trees on this planet we won't run out of tires in my lifetime or or my kids lifetime so they are the ideal Building Material in my mind for this planet but a sensibility to say we've got the stuff tires junk and how can it be used I think it's it's it's a remarkable thing but he thought of using what we might think of as troubling junk to insulate beer cans it's it's a it's an amazing idea I learned it could work you know I learned that people will look at it as garbage forever they'll never get out of the garbage stigma but I learned that you can do this it uh you we we don't have to build with threes and you know I learned a lot about uh taking a little step in a direction that you believe in and it opens doors come on an average sized Earthship is made up of about a thousand glass bottles five thousand tin cans and 750 rubber tires new ones are going up all the time as Michael's Vision catches on with Buyers willing to think outside the box of the traditional home I met Mike in 1986 in a restaurant I was a waitress he was drinking margaritas he asked me out to dinner one day and so I went and asked my girlfriend who's this guy he just asked me out she said he's some crazy guy who builds houses out of garbage and I was intrigued another architect is intrigued This Time by Michael's radical designs and unconventional construction methods he soon becomes Michael's right-hand man well 150 years ago humans did make their own housing and then through Industrial Revolution and industrialized America people lost that ability or that motivation or whatever it was to to create their own housing you know we have a house that that can take care of you as as a house should take care of you like your mother taking care of you by putting their heads together Phil and Michael take their Concepts to a whole new level we have been taking all of these steps for decades and finally maybe less than 10 years ago I realized that I was making a home that did everything it made water it made electricity it heated and cooled itself it grew food it treated its own sewage and it was built from things that we throw away waste and garbage are the building blocks of every Earthship but Michael and Phil pushed the boundaries of their Utopia even further by incorporating renewable energy from the Desert Wind sun and rainfall as well as vegetation together they convert Earth ships into eco-friendly self-sufficient dream homes this is the power system that runs the whole house solar and wind energy are captured every day and stored in rechargeable batteries they release heat and electrical current on demand and distribute it to every room in the Earthship and this is the water module that organizes and filters the water for the house [Music] each Earthship is equipped with a water recovery system precipitation from rain and snow is stored in an outdoor tank the water is filtered then heated by solar panels and finally pumped into the home where it gets recycled as many as four times it is used to take a shower then it is used to grow plants that produce food then it is used to flush the toilet and then the same water again is used to grow the plants in the outer Greenhouse in this way each home also becomes a hydroponic Greenhouse capable of producing toxin-free fresh organic food temperature control and natural light yield year-round fruits and vegetables ready for harvesting just steps away from the kitchen all of those systems I think are really the the best part of the Earthship I mean anyone can build a building but to have the systems be contained within the building I think that's really the strength of the Earthship Michael Reynolds has dedicated 40 Years of his life to designing and building homes that seem to have a life of Their Own today there are over 1 000 earthships around the world in dozens of countries and the demand for more is growing all the time [Music] Michael's revolutionary earthships have a lot of fans but the commercial side of the Enterprise has given him plenty of migraines his rebellious nature often results in him butting heads with regulators and their conventional building codes [Music] when you start taking buildings and taking them away from what we call architecture and responding to the Natural phenomena it scared people he's crazy they call him the garbage man yeah it's just he's one of those rugged individuals Centric yeah he's kind of a little not wacky but a free a free spirit he's a rule breaker [Music] for Humanity to continue for the next Millennia radical changes need to be made and they need to be made fast and I think that's the biggest problem is I'm wanting to move faster than all Dogma allows and I'm constantly you know a a thread away from being in big trouble [Music] in the mid 90s Mike and the company and all of us face some big challenges some Earthship designs are experimental Works in progress as each new structure goes up the builders sometimes encounter technical problems that call for trial and error fixes [Music] as with a lot of new buildings some issues only show up after the owners move in several cases Michael was taken to court by people dissatisfied with their earthships it's a dangerous build a business architecture and building it's it's people's lives they live in it and they take it personally you know a lot of the complaints are about smaller nuts and bolts stuff my my gray water system is too loud is there anything I can do for the pump normal people like to be at 70 degrees Fahrenheit I'd have people sue me if they were at 60. it's that kind of stuff or my kid has asthma and we know that there are mold problems in certain designs in certain environments I never killed anybody I maybe had things go over the budget I maybe had a few things not work right but no more probably than any architect I mean that's the nature of the Beast I was ridiculed because I was building buildings out of garbage that's bad to start with I was running sewage through the living room that's not good you know it's not a problem but it's just that I was doing scary new things that gave them a foothold to crucify me I witnessed this I went down to the hearing in Santa Fe it was like going to going to court around the same time Taos County came into our community and said well you have not set this up as a legal subdivision so they also closed down the community so it all happened at the same time buyers complaints along with violations of the local Planning and Building Codes spell disaster for Michael the New Mexico architectural board took his license his life's work is about to come Crashing Down uh during that time Mike's hair turned completely gray I think it was a big stress for him you you feel like am I a failure what's what's going on here am I really a loser did I really screw up am I incompetent whatever it does it causes you to question yourself is this worth it and why is it so hard and why do we have to push so hard to do something that makes so much sense but Michael isn't one to surrender without a fight he has a stubborn streak although he'll deny it he he just follows his own path he decided the architectural license maybe he didn't need that anyway he could have an engineer stamp his drawings or a different architect so Michael turns a corner and compromises he delegates part of his work to other Architects and complies with changes demanded by the municipal planning department he just dumped all kinds of money he didn't have into meeting all the county needs he had paperwork like this times five had books and books of plants and he had to have people come out and walk the land for arrowheads and he had to like drill a well we had to do all of this road work anyway it took it took several years seven long years in fact and hundreds of thousands of dollars to meet the Taos County building codes and so Michael's dream is back on track as an added bonus his Earthship designs are highlighted in Publications about modern architecture I've always been inspired and admired Mike in the way that nothing to him is a problem he will push and push and push and push right through until he has succeeded at the goal initially and we did and were successful in creating the first small lot off the grid subdivision in the United States which is big [Music] foreign [Music] non-conformity eccentricity uh it's Where the wild west still lives this place is full of Outlaws and nobody's judged in Taos so that's kind of a pleasant thing you can be as eccentric and crazy as you will and people go well that's cool and the general you know this is an artistic community so you're supported here by other artists and I don't know I've talked to a lot of artists that show up in towels only to stay they say you know they can't find another Community like this anywhere [Music] it will slow you down and open your heart if you stay long enough don't rush Taos leave a few days so it's a central beautiful place why is the food so good maybe because we have time to to be with it strong represents uh fruits of the American southwest which All Began here in Northern New Mexico what we're making here today is tamales now ours are a little different we're filling these with buffalo meat this is kind of a tribute to some of the Spanish who hunted buffalo on the plains on the other side of the mountains here I believe in doing Regional Regional Cuisine corn is grown here the chilies are growing here and I'm trying to reinvent in a way Southwestern cooking that is traditional It's a combination of the Mexican influence and the Spanish influence here and the indigenous peoples that are Pueblo natives have been here for probably 1200 years and it's an old discontinuity continually inhabited town or villager site in North America one of the distinct features of Taos New Mexico are the local pueblos Pueblos are communities of Native Americans who still live according to Rich cultural and sacred Traditions handed down by their ancestors I know it sounds woo-woo but there's energy about that there's tradition there's there are roots that I can't explain I can't stress enough my gratitude for as I look at these mountains and and I see that they're not developed and that these lands are sacred and and the graciousness of keeping that open for non-indigenous folks considering their history a beautiful thing [Music] I'm sure the the local Pueblos did influence me the local Pueblos are made from Earth and they as in addition to prairie dogs and birds who make nests out of Twigs all of the creatures of the planet influenced me more than the Architects and Native Americans were Earth and they were the closest thing going on on this planet that was relative to where my mind was going with this connected that were in that spot where the ancient ones figured out how to use the Earth to live I mean Mike and the people who have lived in them too have figured that out they're very they're very connected to the Earth and so it seems as if you're part of the earth because you're sort of just looking up right above the Horizon when you're looking out of them and so in that way it's like I think it gives you a really deep connection to the Earth oh [Music] foreign ships come in several models the simple survival home offering the Bare Essentials for fans of frugality the global model has more amenities with a touch of refinement and then there's the Phoenix this one has it all luxury and comfort modern technology and aesthetic good looks with 1500 square meters or 16 000 square feet of living space crafted from 40 Years of technical Innovation the Phoenix sourced New Heights in sustainable living this building is uh still we're still working on it because it's so huge but in evolving it it's kind of a work in progress type thing it is demonstrating that you can have quite a luxurious lifestyle without any Municipal Utilities you're producing everything for yourself and that's a much more uh mature way for people to live on this planet thank you well um we'll start here in the living room the house is laid out with a bedroom on that side and two bedrooms on this side it's it's really three bedroom two bath home uh this is the living room it has a fireplace basically for fun it's not really for heat but you know to have the atmosphere of the fire is fun other than that the room is just set up with different seating spaces and some close to the plants and some Far Away uh kitchen dining is in here and it's set up with a dining space and a kitchen space a solar refrigerator run by solar power and uh they have little basket in there for eggs from the chickens out here and we can go in here and see the first bedroom and it's we use these buildings as nightly rentals and they are always being cleaned in the middle of the day every day to set them up for the next guests it's kind of a little hotel foreign the building is set up to sleep about eight or ten people it has high speed internet and and definitely a house to re have as a vacation situation this is the bathroom of the first bedroom then it's just two sinks um cold and hot and drinking drinking always occurs at every at every sink because we filter the drinking water a little better this is the bathtub shower with a lot of activity of plants around it and then there's a little timer here that you turn on and if you're going to take a shower while you're waiting for the hot water to get there it gets it circulating through so you aren't wasting water hair walls are the structural walls and they are they're you know almost a meter thick [Music] and they provide tremendous thermal Mass so when this air space gets cooler the walls are a reservoir of good temperature warm temperature that leaks into the room and heats it it works thermal Mass works it's probably the single most uh important thing about the Earthship design is something that people have gotten away from it's not a new thing I mean people used to build out of stone or all kinds of massive materials because they realize that that kind of building held temperature and 30 degrees below zero here in Taos and I live in a house that has no heat laughs [Music] vegetation plays an important role in the Earthship it's everywhere indoors plants aren't just for color and fragrance they serve a practical function [Music] it's kind of General it bear in mind that it is the sewage treatment system the gray water treatment system plants filter and oxygenate the waste gray water so it can be recycled and like the old tires plants help insulate the home as well all of the house is a double Greenhouse concept so you have a greenhouse here in the in the rooms and then another Greenhouse outside and that creates a buffer zone that keeps the house from the living spaces for humans from really knowing what's going on outside whether it be super cold or super hot the double Greenhouse came about as just an experiment we had been doing the glass faces thermal glass for many years and we just added a greenhouse for more growing space really and we noticed that the room in back of the greenhouse was the most stable temperature room we'd ever done so we started doing the double greenhouses in front of every house and it's just made it so the buildings use no fuel that second greenhouse and it's like layers of clothing in the winter that's when we knew okay now we've got something to present to the world now we have something that really works after 25 years of trying to figure it out and then of course that increases your growing uh space this is a small farm actually if if I lived here I'd have more food and less decorative plants growing but it increases the food production to the point of you can almost survive in a building like this off of what you could grow um [Music] and you know basically the house I go in these houses and uh and Grays you know I'll just pick a banana I'll pick grapes or cucumbers or whatever and that's the idea you get the you get more enzymes that way we have one of our citrus trees starting to be I believe it's a grapefruit tree and it's starting to have fruit on it and our bananas are always fruiting and you know you can have bananas in the middle of winter and strawberries and fish we use tilapia and grow them and that's a source of protein and we've had guests in here you know go fishing and catch food for dinner and that's what it's about it's a we use tilapia because they're prolific they reproduce really fast the waterfalls are run by the Sun and they're made to circulate the water to oxygenate it for the fish so we're we're looking into more and more food the purpose of this house is to demonstrate a lot of things but really to demonstrate that you can grow enough food to survive on the ability to raise your own vegetables that's security right and that's one of our basic human needs is to feel secure and so I love that idea about the earthships I think they're kind of amazing that way foreign [Music] so what's the cost of one of these fantastic earthships it depends on the design a build it yourself base model costs only a few thousand dollars the luxurious Phoenix one and a half million dollars according to Michael Reynolds the question is not the money but the value owners gain by reducing their carbon footprint and helping save the planet there are these obstacles but we are trying to say look you can live another way the planet is demanding that we change uh or we will be not here anymore [Music] people don't realize that this is even possible this is this is a treasure really that's not been discovered yet they have to come here when you bring a person in from anywhere on the planet into this home it changes them and I remember my own experience of spending the night in one and opening my eyes in January first of all throwing off covers because it's a pleasant 74 degrees in you know snow on the ground outdoors and along the side of the bedroom there are tomatoes and basil and broccoli really stood out and I thought where the heck am I when I got that aha moment of oh my God they work [Music] summertime anywhere from 100 to 200 visitors a day we get about twenty thousand visitors a year [Music] the weird house is dead right people come to the visitor center from all over the world all walks of life all shapes and sizes they come through for all different kinds of reasons some of them are Architects some of them are students some of them are curious some of them drive by and they're like what is that it's almost like a landmark you know here in Taos because I'm an architect and because most of my friends who come visit are Architects they want to come see the earthships because of the mythology of them you know they're these amazing things in Taos and that's what people know to come see and it makes me a very cool Host this subdivision this community is like the shining example in Taos County they love it earthships are something that is unique to Taos and unique to New Mexico and it does help our local economy now that Earthship biotechter has built a strong team of employees their next goal is to spread the word through Publications Hands-On training and seminars we started to realize that education was really what we needed to do we needed to educate people because we can't do it all because he tries to do everything himself we started out with the books we published the how-to series and the books standardized drawings which are affordable as far as I know we still get letters from people with pictures of the house that they built from you know a set of books we have panels browsing books videos slideshows any way that we can go from where we are on this planet at this point is a good thing we started doing seminars in the summertime and teaching people we want this information out there because if millions of people could get their hands on it it could make the planet last a little longer we're trying to get the message out there as much as possible but basically when people want to build an Earthship usually they see it on the website or they see it through some publication or a TV program and they come to us and we show them what we have we take we take people through it 2007 Earthship biotechter established a training academy the whole building is skirted with plastic so you don't want to put on something that's going to pierce that umbrella a three-week course covers tools and material handling and construction techniques afterwards students can help build their new earthships either here or on their own properties [Music] all the Academy students that sign up will get a feel for each of the aspects of the building process and gets to see different models of earthships and work on different models of earthships since the Earthship Academy first opened enrollment has tripled so it's really grown and it fills up fast and we get people signing up you know far in advance to get a spot in the academy whether it be a home or whether it be you know a school or you know Community Center they want to start a lot of students leave here excited and want to start working on their own projects right away if you just work hard work hard work hard you will succeed people will come to you because of your hard work you know build build it and they will come that sort of philosophy is definitely what we do we just keep building keep building keep producing these houses keep improving them as we do there's more interest in them and now we have 40 people every month here to volunteer to learn about this and we're still we're still improving them we have discovered something stumbled upon something that is like gold and we don't have to advertise our big people to join us because they see I want that I want water I want shelter I want to not have to use energy I want this education of how to do this I want food so and people all over the world want that and we're offering that and we're offering how to do it and everything so it is simply uh you know we're mining for gold and people are going along with us it's been a long hard Road for architect Michael Reynolds and his Earthship biotexture Enterprise along the way he lost his license to practice in New Mexico it still hasn't been renewed but that hasn't stopped the appearance of earthships around the world or in this corner of Taos New Mexico it's here that Michael's dream to build radically sustainable buildings was born and baptized with a name well we called it Greater world you know uh people made fun of that and everything but we're really trying to create a greater World greater than the one that we have because the one that we have sucks Earthship biotexture is trying to Build a Better World by advocating a return to Basics their philosophy evolves from the principle of respect for the planet taught by indigenous peoples visitors come from all over the world to learn how to revive this revolutionary way of living for those who can't make the physical journey to Taos and meet with the charismatic Michael Reynolds and his team Michael offers an alternative I can work everywhere in the world I'm around the world at least half the time and because here's the thing first of all these materials are indigenous to the entire planet and second of all everybody in the world Rich poor developed or undeveloped they need water they need shelter they need comfort they need electricity they need sanitation they need food those are issues with all humans and I have tricks to deal with those issues in any situation and so I'm I've got you know work all over the world thank you one of the things that makes this work it gives it a buoyancy actually is that there's no profit we're we're not really about making money all of us live on wages that we make from the company and nobody's really rich and nobody cares to be when you have a home that does everything for you you don't need much money and we we think it's fun doing this traveling the world and doing this we think it also helps people educates people shares what we've learned so there's no need for the intense profit well I think that the whole idea is being free and this lifestyle for me I find a lot more rewarding because I work for myself every day and you know my job is something that I believe in and find somewhat liberating and I'm working for a cause that I believe in where people will be working for themselves [Music] Is On The Fringe of architecture I've always loved all architects who are on the who push our boundaries and make us think about what we're doing I think it raises the practice of design and I think that he has more of a legacy because he's kind of made architecture for the people in a certain way you know it's for a certain group of people but the people who love it love it I think it's a combination of Art and living because Michael Reynolds has been able to take the elements of the earth into his hands and mold it and shape it into a a thing that works with nature and they're beautiful he's he's a man way ahead of his time thank you

Channel: Abode

Views: 168,860

Keywords: DIY garden projects, Earthship community, Earthship lifestyle, alternative housing, climate action, climate crisis, community building, eco-friendly construction, garden transformation, green homes, green living, natural building techniques, organic gardening tips, recycled materials, reduce carbon footprint, regenerative living, sustainable gardening, sustainable practices, sustainable solutions, water conservation

Id: cE1xFY_3zT4

Length: 44min 31sec (2671 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 25 2023