EARTHSHIP = Off Grid Living & Sustainability 🚀

[Music] foreign [Music] the images you're seeing here are not from a different planet although one could argue they very well may be giving us a glimpse into the future thanks to this man that's Michael Reynolds The Mastermind behind the Earthship and if you're a fan of off-grid living you don't want to miss this story Reynolds first gained notoriety in the 1970s when he built an entire house out of beer cans but that was just the beginning here in the high desert of New Mexico just west of the historic town of Taos in the southern Rocky Mountains San Greta Cristo range Reynolds and his team are pioneering what some have called the home of the future is the Earthship vessel the most sustainable form of housing what is it made of and how are these otherworldly structures built and what is it like to live in an Airship join us for an in-depth interview with Mr Reynolds where he explains the many stages of Earthship construction and shows us how to turn garbage into gold [Music] please subscribe to our YouTube channel so you don't miss out on new videos decades ago I went to a psychic and she said you turn you turn the drops into gold you turn the garbage into gold you're an alchemist and she had no idea what I was doing and I was building a house out of aluminum cans right then [Music] on the news that Walter Cronkite was saying uh you know we're clear-cutting timber in the Northwest we're going to have an environmental and oxygen problem in the future in the very same broadcast did a piece on the old steel beer cans being thrown all over the streets and highways in Yosemite National Park and everywhere what are we going to do about this garbage problem so in my little logical mind beginning I said uh well we want trees so why build houses out of something that we want we don't want cans so why don't we build houses out of cans you know just that oversimplified stupid logic foreign [Music] is Ron there Ron he did what's the ice I stopped him the uh the college thing I my dad was a Milkman so he didn't have money to put me through school he gave me 300 my freshman year and you know so I had to like I played music and wrote term papers and did drawings for rich girls and all kinds of stuff to make my way through college but the college that I went to University of Cincinnati they had a co-op they probably still do had a co-op program where you after your freshman year you go to school three months and then you work and they helped place you in architect's offices for three months where you can make money for your next school section and you can pay your way through school that way that's what I did and so I was for see it's a six year program so for five years I was placed in Architects offices around the world I mean in in London and in San Francisco and everywhere and what I learned I learned enough in that five years to know that in the general sense of architecture the way it was and almost still is on this planet I didn't want anything to do with it yeah a lot of people can afford a Cadillac or a BMW or whatever but most people get Chevys and Fords and Toyotas or whatever because they're they're Priced Right these houses have got to work that way too they can't be all just for the wealthy people they have to be obtainable by the everyday person and this building will do that well this is how a building starts you can see over here on the left are are stacks of tires we stack our tires as per the diameter we put the larger tires on the bottom and pyramid up as we go on the tire wall so we have to organize our tires we get them delivered by a tire store who otherwise would have to pay a dollar and a half a tire to offload them at the dump uh interesting point is every one of our building sites has to be registered in New Mexico as a as a waste management site as a dump site which is a bunch of paperwork because we're storing garbage all they have to do is delete you know you have to change the terminology these are not this is not garbage these are building materials that are first used as wheels for cars and then they're used as building materials you change the terminology and all of a sudden it's not garbage and all of a sudden you don't need all this permitting to store garbage we do have a certain amount of lumber for the roof structure and uh the white insulation that you see is um part of the what we call the thermal wrap it wraps the tire wall so that it becomes like a thermos bottle the the red the insulation wrap goes around the mass keeps it warm and the warm Mass keeps the people inside warm then the building is buried as it goes up here are our tire walls going up we pack them out first with cement and cans and then we switch to mud there's three four six we're in the seventh course here and there's going to be 10 courses then we pour these little footings on top that uh then we set the window boxes on and hold the rafters that go across this would be this is going to be a duplex studio apartment two studio apartments so this will be kitchen living dining kitchen dining living and a bed as well it's a studio apartment and it'll have a greenhouse out here that is kind of part of the whole room and then it'll have one of those metal roofs with no penetrations all of the systems will be in here in the systems room and then this will be a replica of this room kitchen living dining a duplex apartment and there's the cistern going up and this room is where the water module the wom water organizing module and the power module will be in this building this is the utility package for this building that provides the utilities for two buildings now that is another way that we're making this building more economical is making the systems package serve two buildings two units rather than one therefore we're cutting the cost further so what I have found myself doing compounding over the years is understanding trying to understand the phenomena of this planet like the sun like the wind like gravity like thermodynamics uh you know like biology understanding these things that men don't have anything to do with uh um can I leave a message for him uh yes we would be ready for him uh even today if he can come but tomorrow for sure okay this is um this is kind of a building that's maybe 70 65 percent done and uh it just takes you a little further than what we have just seen on the one that's under construction so we uh we mix actual Adobe mud with sand and straw and we put it in between we pack it in between the tires and the voids and then we keep packing until we're actually Plastering so we just fill the walls with mud uh around the tires and it turns into plaster this tire wall shows the tire wall before it's plastered but see we fill it out flush and plaster it and then we put all the solar panels there and there you can see the cans and bottles as in fill and the glass across the front and a good thing to see on this one again would be the roof situation where we have just a a roof that has no penetrations in it see there's a good roof right there that is water catchment a roof with no penetrations just a piece of metal to catch water and take it to a gutter now we can walk around here and see a a homemade cistern see this is our we make the cisterns out of tires and we plaster the insides of them and they um they the water channels right into them from the roof this is our water reservoir and it delivers the water into the pump panel inside with a pressure tank to give you pressurized water so this is you know a little more than halfway through and we have just been to the one that is just getting out of the ground and then we will be going to a finished one [Music] came up with the name Earthship because house has we didn't want to use the word house we want it to be a vessel what if you called an automobile a carriage you know you you it's not a carriage anymore a horse and buggy or anything automobile put us into a whole new realm so the Earthship is a whole new realm of housing that becomes a vessel that sails on the Seas of tomorrow they actually are putting the beer can brick that I invented and patented to make the first beer can house I made a few other houses with them has been on display in the Louvre has been on display it had pictures of it in the Louvre it's been on display in architectural museums in Prague and and in Montreal and so on they've done stories on this house and now I hear it's going to be in Moma in New York City in 2024. in other words this one statement of actually building a legitimate home out of what we call garbage still appears to be the most impressive statement of everything I've done even though now we're standing in front of a building that will absolutely take care of you well that wouldn't have happened without the Breakthrough moment of building a house out of beer cans so I built a house out of beer cans and then kept you know in kept being influenced by the news and added bottles and tires and thermal mass and solar heating solar electricity and and ended up with after 55 years of just responding in a logical way to the world around me we have now have what we call six points the six points that every building must address to provide for people on this planet and it has nothing to do with any grid you encounter the phenomena of the Earth with the vessel with the vessel with the building and you address these six points and one is Comfort without fossil fuel Total Living Comfort shelter without fossil fuel electricity water containment and treatment of your own sewage on-site food which is a huge item these days because it's made for money and it's none of it's any good and garbage this interview with Michael Reynolds has been years in the making and we are grateful for the opportunity a few years back we visited four different earthships at various stages of construction in crestone Colorado the people building the earthships were all directly or indirectly students of Michael Reynolds in the Earthship Academy we'll provide a link to the Colorado earthships tour at the end of this video and in the description below I think the easiest thing to start with here is is getting a shot of the roof the roof has no penetrations it is nothing but a sheet of metal that catches water and takes it to a gutter and the gutter takes it to the cisterns that are these big black tubes coming up the roof drains into the cisterns and the building as you can see is buried all the way around snuggled into the thermal mass of the Earth and the Sun comes in the south side we're catching every drop of water into cisterns we're burying the building with thermal mass and bringing heat into it it's almost creating a bit of a cave except there's much more light than there is in a cave the sun is always in the south in the northern hemisphere it's always in the North in the southern hemisphere so we're orienting the whole building view or no view we happen to have a view in this case we Orient the building to the South because the south is where the sun is it shines on the solar panels they make electricity and take it into a battery Bank inside it shines through the windows and is trapped in the thermal heat it's sort of like a thermos bottle it's trapped inside to heat the building the solar hot water heater is catching the sun on the South Side it is hooked up with a gas demand backup the transoms are open for ventilation and there's one other thing that we will look at is there's tubes coming out the back of the building and they bring in the outside air and to and with convection it goes out the transoms so we can look at those tubes from the inside they bring in the outside air and it escapes through the transoms that gives you natural convection powered ventilation but it also cools the building down in the summer well look at this this is February or March and we're cooling the building down so we have heat spare that gets us more fresh air and so now let's go in the building so this is a solar hot water heater that it doesn't heat water it Heats air that heats the water in the steel tank and it's just an independent passive unit that takes water right into your system [Music] now in terms this is a typical room in this Earthship now if we have a fireplace in it it's built into the wall so that the heat is absorbed into the mass of the wall but it's more for fun I like fire it's not to heat the building it it it's only in one room it's to make your living room have an Ambiance that's all it's for but this room is Mass six foot thick walls around it that absorb physics has it that heat goes to the cooler place so if this room gets warm enough it goes into the walls because they're cooler and then at night when this space gets cooler the heat leaks out of the walls into the space and keeps people warm so the the heating aspect and cooling aspect of these buildings has it that we bring air in through tubes that are right here and they go out the back and we will see them air goes through the tubes it's sucked out of the room with natural convection by these transoms these gravity operated transoms they're not electric operated they're gravity operated they they run on gravity because gravity never wears out so this transom pull shut our gravity operates to open that's as simple as that does that ever wear out you know that's gravity that's logical heat escapes fresh air comes through this is the HVAC system of this home and that's what makes these things uh comfortable now every room in this house is that way in terms of the heating cooling system there are four tubes out back there's four rooms to the house and for that we have three transoms actually in every building we not only recycle you know use cans bottles tires cardboard metal uh but like the ceiling of this room this was an old wood slab fence that somebody was just going to tear down and burn we harvested it and made the herringbone ceiling out of it that thinking goes through every building every building has repurposed materials that keep us from buying new materials now we will go outside and around to the north side of the building and see how the tubes punch through the north side to give you the ventilation but even here you can look back at the steps the risers of the steps are Jagermeister bottles now we're going to go around to the back of this house and look at the tubes but look at these houses over here see these other earthships here look at those four holes in the back of each Airship over here those are the tubes coming through the burial they are the tubes that suck in so as the air goes through the tubes it loses its heat to the Earth and comes in the room in those little doors as cool air now in the winter these tubes are closed but in the summer we open them right now we have a pillow in here to keep the winter cold out but we pull the pillow out and the summer hot air goes into this tube but it's wrapped in all the Earth it loses its heat to the Earth and comes into that living room as cool air and the cool air is swept on through the room and sucked out with natural convection with those operable gravity operable transoms really now what we're seeing here is a jungle now this is not just a jungle it's putting out oxygen for breathing but underneath these Planters they are rubber lined this is the sewage system the gray water we Define gray water as everything but the toilet and the kitchen sink it runs through these rubber line cells it circulates all day long with a solar pump through these rubber line cells with gravel in the bottom the plants roots go down and oxygenate that water and clean it up it's shower water washing machine water sink water they clean the water and oxygenate it plus they get kept alive now there are edible plants here there's Tomatoes there's mint there's Citrus there's bananas you know which you can grow a lot of food in these things this home is a is a nightly rental for Airbnb so it's got more decorative plants but it's it's literally a jungle that is supported by your gray water now at the end of the line down at the other end we suck this water back up and flush the toilet with it well first we use it to take a shower in then we use it to water plants they produce food then we use it to flush the toilet all the same water then we take it outside and do landscaping with it so no drop of water ever leaves this building so you have seen the roof that catches the water and the water goes into the cisterns that are buried in the back and then the cisterns bring it into what we call a water organizing module we'll look at that but then you go from that into your shower and the shower this is the sewage system of the house is it the toilet and the sink go out to a septic an anaerobic processor that then puts it into other rubber line cells outside that do landscaping so the sewage system is totally contained and it uses the water four times so if you get seven inches of rainfall a year but use it four times that that increases it to 28 inches and it makes it so our minimal amount of rain can take care of us now you go on in here to a kitchen in the kitchens just like any other kitchen it's got a gas range we would if I lived here I wouldn't have a gas range I'd have uh induction range and solar oven but people like you know we try to give them a little bit of what they like so because of that gas range this house has got 150 dollars a year utility bill that's it for this house 150 per year and you could do without that it's got a normal refrigerator and and sink hot and cold water now there's one thing to point out here at the at all of the plumbing fixtures and that is that you always have hot and cold but you also have drinking we filter the rain water even more so through a ceramic filter for drinking so you have hot and cold and drinking and other than that you have a normal kitchen now through this screen here we have a washer dryer again normal washer dryer and the dryer is powered by electricity solar but it is heated by gas again and again if I lived here I'd hang clothes on a line I wouldn't use a dryer but we have to give people some of the things that they're used to and like I say if ever it the amount of gas we use is probably 90 percent less than a normal home so if the entire world reduced their gas usage by ninety percent we wouldn't have a problem so we're willing to play that game let's go through the hallway here but there's an important thing in here is the water module and it is um these pumps and pipes over here are what we call the wam the water organizing module the cisterns feed it and it filters and pressurizes the water in that pressure tank and from it you get your hot and cold drinking water hot and cold water and your drinking water and here is uh here is a guest bedroom again with the rubber lined planter in it because they go through the whole house so you're seeing the sewage system in every room and again you have your pressurized water from what we call the wam the water organizing module hot and cold and drinking and that is the the system of water that comes from the metal roof that goes into cisterns that goes through the water organizing module and pressure tank to give you normal pressurized hot water and cold water and it's filtered and it's clean now that drains into the planters that are in front of the building in every room and it's recirced through these rooms all day every day to give you the water that you flush the toilet with this water that you flush the toilet with came from taking a shower in this shower and that shower drains in to the gray water Planters it's re-harvested and used to flush the toilet and again as in every room we have the transoms to let air Escape for convection and in this case the tube is in the utility room and it comes through here and sweeps through the room now here is the master bedroom and again this is a very this is a very simple home it's a very modest home actually we have a walk around closet back there with the tube that comes in 15 inch diameter tube bringing air in sweeping through a transom there's always movement of air through this building movement of air through the building here is the master bath the toilet that flushes from the Planters and then the toilet water goes outside to the anaerobic processor and to Landscaping Planters so we're looking say in this room for instance at the sixth point where the sun comes in and heats this room you can block it in the summer you can also take these drapes and even block it more what these drapes are for is on a super cold winter night look at this they're double insulated drapes on a super cold night you pull these drapes shut and you lock the whole room off from the greenhouse and that keeps all the heat of you and the walls of the room in the room and makes it so you've trapped even more heat you only use this in extreme times and the drapes then are are normally just kept back out of the way and so the heat comes in from the south heats the room is controlled by the drapes and if you're cooling the room you're opening the transom and opening the tube in the back and letting it sweep through with natural convection but if you're heating the room you close the transom close the tubes and let the sun come in and at night close the drapes and you've got heat control that is the extent of HVAC heating ventilating and cooling all done with convection and solar gain and thermodynamics that is all it takes to no money no energy from fossil fuel to make this building comfortable for people the water system is evident in every room because you're catching water from the metal roof circulating the sewage through planters the Planters are growing the food and the electricity is from the Sun in every room you've got normal electricity where you have lights that are just normal from the electrical system and of course these walls you can see in every room their Tire walls and in every room you can see some bottle work so you see the use of garbage to build with you see the use of water caught from the sky you see the use of natural phenomenon to heat and cool you see the use of electricity for powering and you see the use of sewage to grow food every room shows you these six points of sustenance of people achieved by encounter with the natural phenomena of the plant [Music] thank you if any of this Rings any bells are as uh interesting to anybody which I think it very well could be because it's a secure way for the future the way to get a hold of us is ourship.com when you visit earthship.com you'll find a wealth of information let's take a quick look at their website under the visit tab you'll find information on both guided and self-guided tours under stay you'll find information about staying in inertia there are several earthships available for daily and weekly rental in a variety of sizes and price points the learn tab contains information about the online Earthship Academy and the in-person Earthship Academy there is the Earthship field study program where Earthship Academy students participate in an Earthship construction project from the ground up there is also information on the independent study program and internship opportunities under the build tab there is information on several proven Airship designs and Consultation Services you will also will find information on earthships for sale if you are interested in reducing the cost of building an Earthship you may want to consider hosting an Earthship Academy or field study under shop there are books construction drawings and merchandise under donate you can support Earthship projects in areas of need there is also a members area and a Blog there are several phone numbers to reach different Departments of the Earthship organization we'll list those phone numbers in the video description below you can also find them in the footer of earthship.com if you're looking for land to build an Earthship on please visit landio.com click on the available Tab and there you will find all of our available properties across the United States and if you have a property that you're looking to sell click the sell property button it takes a lot of time energy and resources to create this style of informative video please help us reach more people with a positive uplifting message by giving this video a thumbs up leaving a positive comment below and then sharing it with everyone that you know if this video receives a lot of views we'll produce more like it on different topics stick around for the Colorado Earthship tour coming up at the end of this video we sincerely appreciate your time and support thank you and God bless mm-hmm [Music]

Channel: LANDIO

Views: 547,166

Keywords: Earthship, Earthship homes, Off grid, Off the grid, Off grid living, sustainability, sustainable development, sustainable living, homestead, homesteading, living off grid, earthship biotecture, earthship homes, earthships, earthship tour, earthship house, earthship construction, earthship build, earth ship, earthship homes tour, earthship new mexico, michael reynolds, earthship airbnb, earthship design, earthship home, earthship academy, earthship taos, earthship home tour

Id: uZw-_rLMiQg

Length: 31min 56sec (1916 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 24 2023