New Earthships capture more energy, water & food at lower cost

[Music] an Earthship it's kind of like a Noah's Ark that he can navigate the earth with ships sailboats are self-sufficient because they have to be you know if you're out on sea for you know months at a time you have to be completely self-sufficient and it's basically the same concept but on earth so yeah come on in this building you have the green house which you know works as a buffer zone so you're always comfortable you have always have a comfortable temperature inside you grow food you're recycling your gray water and your black water in a non contaminating way you're only on solar you catch rainwater for all the water that you need so for washing and for drinking and about 50% of this building is made out of recycled materials towels is an amazing place to have a lab for these things because it is such such extreme climate and in such an extreme environment but if it works here the work everywhere else in the world you know no not at all just with the water that you use that's enough because every time you wash your hands every time you take a shower that water goes straight in here waters your plants the plants filter that water and then you're using that water to flush your toilet so yeah I mean that to me that's you know one of the things that attracted me to ership because it's just it's just genius there's a lot of other buildings that can have solar power or that use insulation or there's different building techniques but this water recycling system that airships have that's unique to ership you'll see there's a split so you have a toilet and a sink here and then the showers actually on the other side of the greenhouse and so that way you can actually see when you shower there that water then flows all the way through this greenhouse through this planter this is all a little bit sloped so that it all you know goes downhill basically and then here is where you capture that water again that filtered water and it goes over there to flush your toilet it's basically quite low-tech but it's very you'll be prominent in different several buildings oh yeah yeah I mean it's been proven over the last thirty years yeah in your toilet flushes and it drains into this planter it's called a botanical cell and all these plants their roots go down and they get that water but as they get that water they're spitting out oxygen and as they spit out that auction it oxygen it cleans up that water now it produces food figs bananas grapes I forget what these little things are but they're rich in vitamin C berries and what are they Inca berry Inca Berry's avocado tree so you are cleaning up your water why you provide food and flora what you're seeing that we use the water more than one time we use it three or four times and we run it the shower water through this and then flush the toilet with it then the toilet goes out to a conventional septic tank and the conventional septic tank drains into another Botanical cell outside that we use to grow plants outside in this arid climate Mike likes to call these plants leaders and that's what they are they're just eating up all the you don't smell it you don't see it but what happens is you get beautiful landscaping and I never have to water any of this it's very low-tech and that's what's so great about airships you know and for a long time one of the big things that people criticize about airships is that they are so low-tech you know people are like oh there's much more high-tech solutions out there right now you know why are you guys doing things so low-tech you know why do you open up your window with a rope and things like that yeah so this that all has to do with the cross ventilation off the buildings inside there is the cooling tube so you basically open up a little door and you get cold air coming in from the north side of the building that's cool and then you open up this transom up here and basically that's that's what does a cross ventilation so the cold air comes in and flows up through here and that's what keeps a building so nice and cool always it's funny because now that there is a bit of a global crisis or global challenge and people don't want to rely on technology anymore and now people are actually coming back to us and saying like oh that's actually really cool that it is okay because you're not relying on anything like that so this is one of the bedrooms so this is a cooling tube that comes out here so that's basically a long 20-foot tube that goes all the way through the berm in the back and if you stand in front of you it's it's just like air conditioning I mean it's just beautiful how how cool it is it's basically that whole tube is buried right so there's dirt all around it and so that thermal mass is what keeps it so cold if you bury a hole in the ground if you very long enough the dirt down there will be cold always so that's basically how it is so it's it's all natural it's just absolutely natural cooling and and heating and in winter if it gets cold you just close this and close the windows and the greenhouse has that buffer zone and it keeps it nice and warm in here this is where your systems are so this is what we call the palm the power organizing module so this is basically where all your solar comes in then you have the inverter here and your charge controller and here is your batteries so it's really all about storing that energy absolutely yes and it's it's during the energy both in power electricity but also in terms of the heat I mean that's what thermal mass does as well that's what you're doing it's basically just storing yeah I mean the these walls that's how they work so when it's hot out you kind of want your building to heat up as much as possible because then at night when it gets cold those walls are like a battery but basically that heat will come back from it slowly during the night and keep you warm so you have two types of batteries one is more basic and the other is a little bit more complex yeah you could say that and then these walls are all Adobe that's all mud its own natural material and you can even see little bits of straw in there that hold it together and I mean that's what gives it that really you know that's really special feel that I always get inertia is that you have these all these natural materials around you you know just feels great so and here's your water organizing module your filters and your so you know you're the rainwater on the roof falls into those cisterns on either side and then from there it comes through here and there's a number of filters to basically make the water safe for you to be able to you know bathe in it and drink it so that's this is this is a 2-bedroom 1-bathroom so this is a living room so this floor is actually this is it's a ferrous sulphate powder that's used in agriculture basically to make the leaves of your plants greener and so we found out that you can use that to stained concrete floors and it comes out with these really nice patterns yeah and it just look good looks really nice with with a natural wall you know that and this is a DC fridge so it's you know on only on solar directly and yeah and then you have you know the water here coming through those filters that we looked at earlier and this is your drinking water you know and then you can just imagine that water that just went in there it went directly to the plans to water the plants so and then you'll use that same water to flush your toilet Oh totally absolutely yeah so basically we calculated depending on where we're building and what the use and the occupancy of the building is and how much rain there is and how big the building is we calculate how much water source you're going to have and that's the thing it's like this whole thing now with the pandemic and the quarantine and all that you know we're like whoa we've kind of been living like this for years now already much of a change for us because this is what we do so that's the tyre wall and they come out pretty much to where my head is right now that's all old tires that will just go straight to the landfill and we use them as walls we are pounding tires today and our second day at the encounter three and so the pounded tire is a great source of thermal mass as well as a very problem piece of garbage everywhere so you are getting rid of a problematic piece of garbage creating a thermal mass wall and you can actually bear the load of a roof on oh absolutely yeah and I built I built my own without knowing much of anything some of our crew there they're building their own homes you know so this is the encounter what is this okay well the encounter I mean there's you can see all the buildings around here and so we've had a lot of different models over the years starting with a you module which wasn't super super performing and so then we try to get better and better and better and then we came up with this model called the global model and it performed great and didn't require any mechanical heating or cooling at all in this climate but it was kind of expensive the encounter is an effort to get similar performance but reduce the cost per square foot just see tire Rick's getting there I think we have about two courses left on the back wall here inside you can see our entire foundations these are for the inner and outer greenhouse there will be two vertical walls here with glass in them and doors to pass through the roof is easier on this building you know also the exterior greenhouse is just a simple vertical greenhouse consisting of standard sized glass so it's just when you can reduce how long it takes to build something you're going to reduce cost this crew just built that building in four months that one was two hundred and nineteen thousand dollars and it's a totally autonomous building that gives you everything you need for survival with very little bills you can see how big this roof is the reason it is so big is because if this is where you catch all your rainwater that you are then going to filter and use for your consumption in the building so this is with these ones they're sloping the other way and if you look over here with the north facing roof in winter and extreme temperatures a lot of times the water will freeze south-facing because you always have the sun shining on it if it won't freeze so it's even more low-tech than what a global model is the other thing with these buildings is you can see there's absolutely no not one single penetration all of the roof so everything all the bends everything all the holes are coming out the side what basically that you never have any leaks and then you can see that gutter all the way to the front which collects all the water coming from the roof and goes into the cisterns on each side these are the transoms which is basically the other side of your air conditioning that's the window that I was opening up before from the inside where you basically have that cold air coming through that tube and then it rises up as it gets warmer and comes out here and that's what creates that air conditioning these are your solar panels so you have six solar panels this building has just been completed that's why it kind of looks you know a little bit ugly and it's just like basically a big mountain of dirt but over time it would just be this beautiful grassy hill basically and you get wildflowers on it and everything else do you call it underground earth integrated bermed yeah because it's not really underground it's you know the older ships those were built underground so that you would actually they're called pit houses but if this does make a lot more sense because you can build them anywhere you know you don't need to be putting all that energy into excavating a hole this is one of the changes that we've made and in the other buildings now is that we actually have like a little door that you can open and close rather than just having this is just basically a plug of insulation that you put in if you want to close it so yeah so basically in winter you just plug them and that's it and so that's insulated the concept of thermal mass is a really old concept that's the beauty of it is that it is so low-tech that a lot of it is technologies that have been used for thousands of years you know and and an Earthship is really the only building though that puts all of those things together and makes it one functioning building announcer there's I think it's just a neural Android when there's more sub communities and towers this is not the only one this is the biggest one we've said for a long time that is the biggest self-sufficient community in the world but there's actually no truth the Buddhist monks in in the end in Tibet and so on they are the biggest self-sufficient community in the world this is what this street is called Lone Tree Lane because one tree in the middle of nowhere do people make the Star Wars analogy a lot oh yeah yeah a lot yeah yeah yeah I mean I didn't driving by here you know and all of a sudden you see this and you're like what is this you know where where did I just land and and then the tropical airships like the one in Puerto Rico Mike loves comparing that one to the Lord of the Rings he calls it Rivendell so how many types of workshops are there ah it's a lot of different ones yeah I mean the main ones are like the global model and the encounter which we'll just saw the simple survival which is like the most basic Earthship that there is that also has very basic systems and that's what a lot of people didn't like about them because you didn't have to restrict yourself a little bit in your water use for example and things like that so these are all global models that we can see you now this is the older global model and then the one that we're gonna go see now those sounds like the newer global model which has that bigger greenhouse you can see the roof is getting put on you can still see the cistern in this case if the cistern is in the back there usually between a thousand and 1700 gallons so yeah I mean this is you know you can see that the that it is a lot bigger than what we just saw the greenhouse is a lot bigger as well but still exactly the same principles this is basically just aluminum cans that you know what otherwise either be recycled or land in the landfill in towers right now the recycling station closed down a few months ago so there is absolutely no recycling of glass bottles or cans and which gives us even more of a reason to use them here you can see here the tyre wall and it faces north a little bit because then you have that dirt pushing against it from the other side and creating that physics force basically that makes that wall stand and then the roof is different here yeah we used what we call vigas these are locally sourced and yeah they're basically round beams in New Mexico they're called vigas and then you can see the beginning of bottle breaks over here so all these are just old bottles that are basically cut in half and what do is you just put them together you clean them you put them together and you put a piece of tape around them you have a break and usually what you do is you put the colored one towards the Sun and so that's what makes it shine and those beautiful colors where it almost looks like a jewel between nine and thirteen I mean these walls we put a little bit of cement in it for what we use pack out which is basically just to give it a little bit of structure and to cover the dirt and the tires but it usually only gets like one level and then we use mud so you know the walls the structure walls of the building are basically just tires and dirt there's no cost to it besides obviously the muscle strength are you putting into it we kind of go through this thing where you're like you know you start a build and you get really fit because you spend two weeks just pounding tires and then you kind of go on to other things to carpentry and whatever and you kind of get like all fluffy again and then you start another build and you get already fit again so yeah I'm gonna go upon tires tomorrow I mean it's hard work pounding attire but it's something that anybody can do but I mean that's the beauty it said you could did should we get you know 20 of your friends together 10 of your friends together and just say like hey you know let's build this and anybody can do it it's that easy house is like you know what people say either you love it or you hate it because it's a it's a desert you know it's not it's it can be quite challenging as well sometimes you know what even this kind of work is you know physical labor it's not for everyone especially the way we grew up these days but yeah that's true but it's also mean as I say we get people from all different backgrounds and age groups and fitness levels and there's always something to do you know for everyone there's old always if you can't pound tires for whatever it is you know you can do other things you can make bottle breaks you know there's always something and that's that's kind of the beauty of it you know is that you need strong people and people that are not as strong people that are skilled people they're not a skill to put it all together as a community and create these these beautiful buildings you know so yeah I mean you still have you kind of have exactly the same dramas and in every other you know community of neighbors for sure but um you could definitely feel that everybody's so environmentally conscious you know everybody's here because of the same goal at the end of the day you know and that's beautiful it's really nice it's you can definitely feel that you live in this community where everybody just has the same idea about you know living and about raising their kids and about what the future is going to be like you know one of the neighbors here he actually said to me the other day the people that live here were all people that have opted out we have you know we all kind of opted out of the system and that's why we're here which is very true you know we kind of took destiny into our own hands and are like well this is you know a little bit better so this is why I'm saying at the moment but keep in mind this is still work sighs so you know excuse the mess this is the main part over here and this is so basically the version that we just saw this is basically from here to there this is what it will look like at some point the plans here are convertible and you got banana town we've got all these different types of chilies in here and all the plants just absolutely love it the rosemary is just going crazy the fakes are almost ready but you can see how many are on here you know and now in summer you see this new you're like oh yeah that makes sense but if you're in here and it's 15 degrees Fahrenheit below zero outside and you're growing pineapples in here you know I've seen the snow lying on the ground outside I mean that's it's just a trick I mean the bottle walls in this building are just gorgeous yeah I know but people don't like that of airships you know that the ods things but you know you can also make it as simple as you want you know the power system in this building is big enough to just have a conventional fridge in here do you think this can scale oh I mean hopefully you know there's also a lot of criticism against airships you know people are like well a lot of people say or ships are like the dinosaurs of alternative construction this one even has a bathtub I mean how far you can take it you know water storage you can have a bathtub in you and then this is the second bedroom um just a little bit bigger same concept and then in here this is a reception sales from again your shower water go sitting here first gets filtered there's obviously buildings that automatically have blinds opening and closing which all the things that you could integrate into an Earthship if you wanted to but that's also one of the beauties of it is that it is so low-tech you know we kind of want to keep it that way and the Windows systems it's different the boxes yeah I mean the concept is exactly the same you still have the cooling tubes coming through and then instead of having the windows on the vertical you have them up here on the other side yeah it's just Carly that's why we like the Rope thing as well because it is like they're making that like a sailboat you know yeah there is any other ships there's one worth of you where they actually have put in the technology to automate this but is it necessary no you know yeah these are extremely expensive they're just like little sweet berries we kind of have this education system which is kind of I feel like global in the more developed world where we're like educated but away from nature and in a way you can even go right now people are kind of forced to look at it the other way and and look at it in a way of like okay we need to embrace the environment we need to embrace the planet and in nature and and and make it work that we can live in conjunction with that here you basically live in these living buildings I mean that's part of it you know I was like living more in conjunction with nature's that you have person s in your house and they don't bother anybody there you know if we use everybody else [Music]

Channel: Kirsten Dirksen

Views: 1,075,419

Rating: 4.9165764 out of 5

Keywords: earthship, new earthship, encounter earthship, underground home, earth home, earth integrated home, buried home, off grid, rainwater capture, water reuse, home sewage treatment, taos, new mexico, earthship biotecture, thermal heating, solar heating, thermal cooling, passive solar, water harvesting, dew harvesting, contained sewage treatment, natural materials, repurposed materials, deborah binder, michael reynolds

Id: wVp5koAOu9M

Length: 24min 18sec (1458 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 12 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/nodogbutdog]

A very efficient desert design that could be done without the tires. I spent some time living in off grid adobe structures and when it's done right it's beautiful. The issue is accessibility, even "simple" materials like adobe and recycled windows takes a lot of permitting and contracting and capital to turn into a house the gov won't find find and tear down.

I'm exploring developing a sustainable housing co-op to build a community of units to sell/rent to own at affordable prices. Make this kind of off grid sustainable home accessible to working people.

[u/_ketchapPls]

Super into earthships! Like the self sustaining idea behind it but also not fan of the tires. I prefer the ‘earth bag’ home, also utilizes thermal mass but uses bags instead of tires. Would be such a dream to live in a small community with these

[u/Spirited_Squash_1535]

I don't know about living next to a pile of used tires.

Thermal mass and clever uses of large windows is definitely a good approach to energy efficient housing, especially in desertic area with a large range of temperature.

But that thing were they need 30 people to pound earth into those tyres, that's just a waste of time. And I'm pretty sure you can't stop leeching chemicals. Just use plain earth and rocks. We invented heavy machinery, let's use them. Build a large pond, or and underground greenhouse and use the dirt.

[u/bojacked]

This is amazing... Im interested and it could solve a lot of problems.

[u/amha29]

Can you guys stop focusing on the tires. I’m sure there’s other alternatives. And not every home is made with them. Focus on the idea of a home where you don’t need help from the government or pay utility bills or even worry about food, if you can provide all of it yourself.

Not only that, but this is a better way of living and it helps the environment. Can ya’ll imagine if there were more communities based on this type of living?

[u/bah2o]

Collecting rain water and reusing gray water is a red flag for some governments

The overall concept of earthships is great, but it's really intended for rural areas. Which is fine when you have the space for septic and water tanks.

Taking the ideas of thermal mass and greenhouse for regulating temperature; solar panels; collecting, filtering and reusing water for tap, edible gardens and inedible plants are all great.

I don't think we need more housing developments. I think we need to either retrofit, or demo and rebuild existing structures (as needed), and implement greener alternatives.

Plants/gardens and solar panels on rooftops, solar panels, energy efficient appliances and building designs (heat pumps in addition to traditional and passive house designs) are some simpler first steps than drastically changing our current approach, especially in more urban areas

[u/CatherineFerraro]

I saw a documentary about earthships in my 20s and have been obsessed with them ever since. One guy built hurricane proof homes out of filling old water bottles with sand and using them as the building blocks. I wanna build a whole community of them for homeless vets, and another for run away teens, which i can't believe are problems we haven't yet fixed. But we will!

[u/level20mallow]

Meh. They have mold and air circulation problems, and there are better designs out there. Plus Earthships are proprietary and the designer makes a killing off of the monopolization of his designs.

[u/FordicusMaximus]

Earthship homes aren't new, but have been somewhat receiving renewed interest in the west. Personally, some of the tech I'll be looking to help further develop is that of recycling plastics for building materials. Ideally, we could find a way to create plant-based plastics that decompose quickly, but for now, we have to work with what we have. Earth covered homes are also pretty sweet. I want a guest house hobbit hole.